Outing the Elephants: Exploring a New Paradigm for Child Protection Social Work

Abstract

Abstract

“It is not just about doing or saying the right things”: Working systemically with parents whose children are placed in public care

“…Parents in Schofield et al's comparative study from four Western European countries (2011) expressed how CPS expected them to act rationally following the crisis they were in after the loss of their children; these parents perceived this as an unrealistic expectation. In a study from New Zealand, Hyslop and Keddell (2018) showed how poverty led to difficult family dynamics, which were interpreted by CPS as inadequate care. These confusions and misapprehensions highlight the need for a contextual understanding in the interpretation of parents' behaviours and interactions with CPS; thus, systemic family therapy has been recommended as an approach to support parents who have lost care of their children (Morgan et al, 2019).…”

From vulnerability to risk: Consolidating state interventions towards Māori children and young people in New Zealand

“…Social inequality and financial hardships were consistently overlooked as key factors in child maltreatment, in favour of a persistent focus on individual and community failings. Poverty was cast as an excuse (Hyslop and Keddell, 2018). This vulnerability discourse held struggling families accountable for their structural location while labelling children as potential threats.…”

“…The deployment of pre-emptive strategies for identifying children ‘at risk’ of offending that is advocated in this paper equates to a call for an extension of the reach of the criminal justice system into the lives of children from vulnerable populations (Case, 2007; Daniel, 2010; Roets et al, 2017). While the ‘circumstances and behaviours associated with material deprivation are construed as indicators of heightened danger and harm to children’ (Hyslop and Keddell, 2018: 1), they also indicate the heightened dangers and harms from children. In short, marginalised young people are more likely to be decreed as particularly risky on account of their structural and institutional vulnerabilities (such as poor education or work opportunities, limited access to community services, or victimisation) as well as their potential delinquencies.…”

Interpreting children’s best interests: Needs, attachment and decision-making

“…In the child welfare context, the official discourse of many Western countries is that removal from biological families is an option of last resort for children who have been abused and neglected, and this has influenced perceptions of children’s ‘best interests’. This preference for family maintenance has been a prominent discursive driver in the Aotearoa/New Zealand (A/NZ) context, although this is in a period of rapid flux characterised by a swing towards a more interventionist stance (Cashmore, 2009; Hyslop, 2015; Keddell, 2014b). This swing is exacerbated by the confluence of the global embrace of children’s rights, a rise in public expectations of the state to intervene protectively, state withdrawal of economic welfare resources, and heightened risk anxieties (Featherstone, White, & Morris, 2014).…”