In this paper, we utilize both English and German language scholarly literature to describe the use of four core concepts in child protection. Using the scholarly literature, we address the research questions: (1) How are these four concepts used in regard to child protection services? (2) How do these four concepts address and reflect the social…

Child protection social workers in England are required to make many decisions in their day-to-day work, including whether to accept a referral, undertake a child protection investigation, pursue care proceedings, or close the case. Many of these decisions involve implicit or explicit predictions about the likelihood of future actions, events, and…

Across the UK, child protection social workers are routinely called upon to assess the likelihood of future significant harm to children. Yet making consistently accurate judgements about what may or may not happen in future can be a difficult task. In a previous study, we tested social workers' abilities (n = 283) to forecast the likelihood of…

The objective of this paper is to inform a critical analysis of how the media portray family support in Ireland. Findings of a content analysis carried out on national and regional Irish newspapers between 2014 and 2017 are presented which describe communication about family support services provided by Tusla-Child and Family Agency. Results show…

The purpose of this paper is to present a reading of child protection and welfare practice in the recent COVID-19 pandemic, with reference to several popular concepts in social work. The focus is on the relevance of these concepts to the contemporary circumstances in which child protection and welfare social workers often now find themselves. The…

Internationally there has been a movement to reform investigative work in child welfare and protection systems. These reforms have aimed to introduce national frameworks that systematize the way assessments are carried out. Several reports have identified shortcomings in the way that child protection investigations are carried out in Norway.…

The paper explores what lies behind the development of Sámi child protection services in practice. The study is an empirical investigation of how policymakers and child welfare leaders reflect on the challenges and opportunities in this field. All the twelve participants in the study worked in northernmost counties of Norway that are part of the…

This article presents the novel Child Attachment Relationship (CAR) Guide for social workers in child protection and fostering. The Guide was created to promote social workers' understandings of children's attachment relationship and to identify the means through which those understandings might be enhanced towards their practice. The research and…

This systematic review aimed to identify how children's right to health, connected to the principles of protection, promotion, and participation, and from the perspectives of children, parents, and professionals in preschool, school, and healthcare has been empirically demonstrated by international scholars between 1989 and 2021. Following the…

Decision-making in child protection is often understood as the final step in the process of risk, assessment and decision-making. However, when working with referrals about children at risk, decisions are also made a lot earlier when someone decides whether to refer a child to child welfare services or not. The risk assessments made by child…

This article explores the factors that influenced team leader decision-making processes about pathways for duty/intake referrals in one TUSLA region in the Republic of Ireland. It provides an overview of theories relating to decision making focused on systems, risk, relationships and processes. An ecological framework is presented as the…

In response to the unhealthy, threatening living arrangements separated children seeking asylum were provided with in Ireland in the early 2000s, the Social Work Team for Separated Children committed itself to replacing the inadequate care with care that truly meets the needs of children. However, the transition to the level of service provided…

Research on the intersection between migration management and child protection is limited and, yet, contradictions between these two domains and ambivalence in the area of child migrants' rights across the developed world have already been highlighted. Based on fieldwork with policymakers and service providers in Albania, a middle-to-high income…

Little research has been undertaken into how children with complex communication needs living in residential care are encouraged to express their views, be involved in decision-making, and importantly, make it known when they are unhappy. This group are often placed a long distance from home and can be some of the most vulnerable children in the…

Since 2015, local municipalities in the Netherlands have been responsible for the organisation of the youth care and child protection system. One of the basic assumptions underlying the new Youth Act (2015) is the mobilisation and empowerment of the family to help solve their problems. Consequently, the participation of children and parents is…