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Shortly after the Berlin Wall came down and after the Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted by the United Nations, images of malnourished children in institutions in Romania were broadcast by international media. They showed inhumane conditions in which children were living in residential institutions in Romania. Those visiting the institutions were surprised that the babies were silent. The so-called Romanian orphans made headlines for many years to come and they became subjects of several international research studies. To become a member of the European Union, Romania had to reform its child protection system. This book sheds light on the lived experiences of those born around 1990. Their childhoods were subject to successive reforms and sometimes divergent external influences. Most of them became adults around 2007 when the country joined the EU. Uniquely, the book brings together the accounts of those who stayed in institutions, those who grew up in foster care and those adopted, in Romania and internationally. Their narratives challenge stereotypes about these types of care.

This book examines a participatory approach in child protection practices in Norway and the United States, exploring ways of empowering children. The book shows how children can be encouraged to develop and express their own opinions and explores tools for child protection workers to negotiate complex boundaries around the inclusion of children in decision-making. The goal of the book is to show in what ways child protection caseworkers employed by public child protection agencies in Norway and the United States can create citizens by promoting the participation of children and young people in their everyday practice. Public child protection agencies are only one part of the citizenship piece, but they are a salient one in the lives of children and young people who encounter them. Child protection caseworkers working in public child protection agencies, make very important decisions about children and young people's lives and provide children, youth, and families with pertinent services. The book presents valuable insights from front-line child protection professionals' unique perspectives and experiences within two very different systems, and evaluates the impacts of different organizational practices in promoting children's participation.

This book describes the new Poverty-Aware Paradigm (PAP), which was developed in Israel through intense involvement with the field of social work in various initiatives. The paradigm was adopted in 2014 by the Israeli Ministry of Welfare and Social Services as a leading paradigm for social workers in social services departments. The book draws from the rich experience of the implementation of the PAP in practice and connects examples of practice to theoretical ideas from radical/critical social work, critical poverty knowledge, and psychoanalysis. The PAP addresses poverty as a violation of human rights and emphasizes people’s ongoing efforts to resist poverty. In order to recognize these sometimes minor acts of resistance and advance their impact, social workers should establish close relationship with service users and stand by them. The book proposes combining relationship-based practice and rights-based practice as a means of bridging the gap between the emotional and material needs of service users. In addition to introducing the main concepts of the PAP, the book also contributes to the debate between conservative and cultural theories of poverty and structural theories, emphasizing the impact of a critical framework on this debate. The book consists of four parts. The first, “Transformation”, addresses the transformational nature of the paradigm. The second, “Recognition”, is based on current psychoanalytic developments and “translates” them into social work practice in order to deepen our understanding of relationship-based practice. The third, “Rights”, describes rights-based practice. The fourth, “Solidarity”, presents various ways in which solidarity might shape social workers’ practice. The book seeks to reaffirm social work’s core commitment to combating poverty and furthering social justice and to offer a solid theoretical conceptualization that is also eminently practical.

This book presents new research on the extent to which parents and children participate in decision making when childcare social workers are involved and it considers two key meetings in depth: child protection conferences and child in care reviews. There is currently a great deal of interest in how social workers can work more effectively with families and in particular give children a voice. There is also considerable public and media interest in the child protection system, in particular relating to how children are safeguarded by social workers. This book will argue that unless we listen to (and act upon whenever possible) the views of children it is very difficult to safeguard and offer them an effective service. The unique selling point of the book will be that it is based on original solid empirical research following interviews with multiple stakeholders across two local authorities in England including children (n=75), parents (n=52), social workers (n=11, independent reviewing officers (n=8) and senior managers (n=7). This book will consider how 10 years of austerity has impacted on the child protection system and it will have a particular focus on how current practice leads to children and parents often feeling oppressed and excluded in decision making about their lives. The book promises to be authoritative and informed on issues on the ground and very relevant to both policy and practice.

Comparative research has identified two broad types of child welfare system. In child protection systems the principal remit of welfare agencies is to identify and respond to actual or potential incidences of child abuse or maltreatment. In contrast family service systems are characterised by a stronger spirit of partnership between the state and families and an emphasis on working to prevent the need for coercive state intervention. This book examines the development of children’s services reform in England over recent decades to explain a shift from family service polices towards a narrower child protection approach. Successive waves of reform in England have invariably been framed as responses to high-profile child abuse inquires and media generated scandal including the cases of Victoria Climbié and Baby P. However, this book challenges the idea that it is the apparent failings of local agencies, including child and family social workers, that drive successive waves of reform. Instead, it turns the spotlight on the process of policy-making at the national level, and highlights the role played by party political leaders and senior government ministers in driving reform. The book is informed by 45 interviews with key decision-makers including ministers, senior civil servants, children’s charity leaders, local authority directors and social work researchers.

Focusing on online-facilitated sexual abuse, this book takes a rigorous approach to existing literature to address some of the most pressing public and policy questions on this type of abuse. The book examines which children are most vulnerable, how their vulnerability is made, what they are vulnerable to and how we can foster resilience. It begins with an overview of online child sexual abuse. Victims are made both by the acts perpetrated on them and by the social context in which these acts take place and the consequences that are felt. The book examines online-facilitated child sexual abuse research through the lens of this social context, which contains multiple definitions of what is childhood, sex, and abuse as it connects to the Internet. The book calls for greater clarity and agreement on definitions and measurement practices concerning online child sexual victimisation. In conclusion, it recommends that guardianship responsibility is extended to children themselves and considers some of the technical tools that might assist their participation.

This comprehensive international study provides a cross-national analysis of different understandings of errors and mistakes in child protection practice and lessons to avoid and handle them, using research and knowledge from eleven countries in Europe and North America. Divided into country-specific chapters, each examines the pathways that led to mistakes, the scale of their impact, how responsibilities and responses are decided and how practice and policy subsequently changed. Considering the complexities of evolving practice contexts, this authoritative, future-oriented study is an invaluable text for practitioners, researchers and policy makers wishing to understand why child protection fails – and offers a springboard for fresh thinking about strategies to reduce future risk.

Child poverty is rising across affluent western societies and how it is measured is vital to how governments act to prevent, alleviate or eliminate it. While the roots of childhood poverty are fiercely debated and contested, they are all too often misrepresented in policy and media discourses. Seeking to redress this, Treanor places children’s experiences, needs and concerns at the centre of this critical examination of the contemporary policies and political discourses surrounding poverty in childhood. She examines a broad range of structural, institutional and ideological factors common across developed nations, and their impacts, to interrogate how poverty in childhood is conceptualised and operationalised in policy and forge a radical pathway for an alternative future.

Urban educational research, practice, and policy is preoccupied with problems, brokenness, stigma, and blame. As a result, too many people are unable to recognize the capacities and desires of children and youth growing up in working-class communities. This book offers an alternative angle of vision—animated by young people's own photographs, videos, and perspectives over time. It shows how a racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse community of young people in Worcester, Massachusetts, used cameras at different ages to capture and value the centrality of care in their lives, homes, and classrooms. The book's layered analysis of the young people's images and narratives boldly refutes biased assumptions about working-class childhoods and re-envisions schools as inclusive, imaginative, and “careful” spaces. The book challenges us to see differently and, thus, set our sights on a better future.

This book offers an analysis and summary of the uses, abuses and limitations of attachment theory in contemporary child welfare practice, examining controversies and offering a new pedagogy that is responsive to the changing dynamics of contemporary families. The book shows how attachment theory can distort and influence decision-making. It argues that the dominant view of attachment theory may promote a problematic diagnostic mindset, whilst undervaluing the enduring relationships between children and adults. The book concludes that attachment theory can still play an important role in child welfare practice, but the balance of the research agenda needs a radical shift towards a sophisticated understanding of the realities of human experience to inform ethical practice.