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.

Child Protection is part of an exciting new series from SAGE. Developed as accessible reference tools, SAGE Course Companions offer comprehensive introductions to core subjects, encouraging students to extend their understanding of key concepts, issues and debates. Child Protection offers readers an accessible overview of the core themes in child abuse and child protection, helping readers understand both the theory and practice involved in child protection, as well as enhancing their thinking skills in line with course requirements.

Following high-profile Serious Case Reviews into the tragic deaths of children, including Victoria Climbie, Peter Connelly and Daniel Pelka, information sharing has now become a moral and political imperative for safeguarding the welfare of children. What prompts information sharing and how do we get it right? This accessible book challenges widely held assumptions about information sharing in child welfare that facts about risks to children are clear and that sharing them with other professionals is a straightforward process. End-of-chapter questions prompt reflection and ensure direct practice relevance. This is essential reading for academics and policy makers, students on post-qualifying child protection courses, social workers, managers and all other professionals tasked with safeguarding children.

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.

By using positive methods of discipline parents have the opportunity to provide their children with an optimal home environment for healthy emotional growth and development.

Reflecting back on one's work to determine where one succeeded or failed is crucial in any field, but it's particularly important in social work, where mistakes can cause real harm. In this book, Alessandro Sicora argues for the value of reflecting on our professional mistakes, and he offers a number of tools, for individuals and groups--backed by real-world examples--designed to help social workers at every stage of their career establish a regular, reliable, and effective reflective practice.

Child Welfare Removals by the State addresses a most important (but little-researched) legal proceeding: when the State intervenes in the private family sphere to remove children at risk to a place of safety, adoption, or in other forms of out-of-home care. It is an intervention into the private family sphere that is intrusive, contested, and a last resort. States' interventions in the family are decided within legal and political orders and traditions that constitute a country's policies, welfare state model, child protection system, and children s position in a society. However, we lack a cross-country analysis of the different models of decision-making in a European context. This text aims to present new research at the intersection of social work, law, and social policy concerning child protection proceedings for children in need of alternative care. It explores the role of court-based and voluntary decision-making systems in child protection proceedings, its effects, dynamics, and meanings in seven European countries and the United States, and analyses the tensions and dilemmas between children, parents, and socio-legal professionals. The book consists of eight country chapters, plus an introduction and conclusion chapters. The range of countries of countries represented in the book covers the social democratic Nordic countries (Finland, Norway, and Sweden), the conservative corporatist regimes (Germany and Switzerland), the neo-liberal (England, Ireland, and the United States), and related child welfare systems.