"Professionals working in child welfare and child protection are making decisions with crucial implications for children and families on a daily basis. The types of judgements and decisions they make vary and include decisions such as whether to substantiate a child abuse allegation, whether a child is at risk of significant harm by parents, and whether to remove a child from home or to reunify a child with parents after some time in care. These decisions are intended to help achieve the best interests of the child. Unfortunately, they can sometimes also doom children and families unnecessarily to many years of pain and suffering. Judgments and decisions in child welfare and protection are based to a large extent on the formidable knowledge base on child abuse and neglect created over the years to support this professional task chore. Nevertheless, making decisions in complex and uncertain environments is fraught with many difficulties and shortcomings. There are in fact many indications that decisions in this area are not reliable and there are many errors in judgment that could be avoided, had the decision makers relied on existing knowledge on decision making under uncertainty and followed appropriate procedures. Much needs to be improved on how these decisions are made by individual professionals and child welfare agencies"--

Essay from the year 2014 in the subject Pedagogy - Pedagogic Sociology, grade: 70, University of Portsmouth, language: English, abstract: Social work practice in relation to child protection has gone through changes in both England and Germany due to global and local processes. International social work policy and professional standards driven by the juxtaposition of neo-liberalism and social justice has become a cornerstone of national and local professional practice contexts. Practice relating to safeguarding children has developed globally through the process of political globalisation, "connecting large scale societies together in a whole variety of ways, from international political agreements electronic communication technologies and more fluid migration patterns.” (Giddens, 2009:110) Policy development and implementation by Supra-National organisations such as the United Nations are often created as universal ‘blanket policies’, with the aim of promoting equality and social justice for all. For example child protection policy in both countries has been influenced by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) (1989). However” local policy and practice will nevertheless be influenced by national contexts and ‘mediated by country specific institutional arrangements’ – a process describe(d) as ‘glocalization’.” (Lyons et al 2006:34) Further to this national policy development is often not constrained to its boarders and can influence policy development internationally. “Increasingly, national policies are ‘rarely purely domestic in impact’ but have international implications, either because they impact directly or because of ‘social policy emulation’.” (Healy, 2001 cited in Lyons et al,2006:28) Global communication and the availability of data and research has become instantaneous. International and professional leaders and academics are able to compare and contrast theoretical perspectives, policies and practices and adapt them to fit local contexts.

This book builds upon and advances the comparative analysis of child protection systems that was conducted in the mid-1990s. Since the mid-1990s, however, much has changed in the realm of child welfare and how states define and deal with their responsibilities for children at risk. This book sets out to identify and analyse these changes and their implications, with a particular focus on assessing the extent to which the child protection and family service orientations continue to provide a helpful framework for understanding and comparing systems in different countries.

Many countries are struggling with issues involving the definition of child maltreatment, reporting requirements, processes for responding to reports, and services to abused children and their families. This book illustrates approaches to dealing with these problems by examining and comparing the designs of child abuse systems.

Lessons from child protection errors and mistakes in 11 countries in Europe and North America are drawn together in a stimulating study from leading researchers in the field. By comparing and contrasting impacts, responses and responsibilities, it deepens understanding of how child protection systems fail and points to ideas for risk reduction.

This open access book critically explores what child protection policy and professional practice would mean if practice was grounded in human rights standards. This book inspires a new direction in child protection research – one that critically assesses child protection policy and professional practice with regard to human rights in general, and the rights of the child in particular. Each chapter author seeks to approach the rights of the child from their own academic field of interest and through a comparative lens, making the research relevant across nation-state practices. The book is split into five parts to focus on the most important aspects of child protection. The first part explains the origins, aim, and scope of the book; the second part explores aspects of professionalism and organization through law and policy; and the third part discusses several key issues in child protection and professional practice in depth. The fourth part discusses selected areas of importance to child protection practices (low-impact in-house measures, public care in residential care and foster care respectively) and the fifth part provides an analytical summary of the book. Overall, it contributes to the present need for a more comprehensive academic debate regarding the rights of the child, and the supranational perspective this brings to child protection policy and practice across and within nation-states. .

Children and parents have become a focus of debates on ‘new social risks’ in European welfare states. Policymaking elites have converged in defining such risks, and they have outlined new forms of parenting support to better safeguard children and activate their potential. Increasingly, parents are suspected of falling short of public expectations. Contributors to this special issue scrutinize this shift towards parenting as performance and analyse recent forms of parenting support.