In follow up of Bristol Council’s important and courageous collaboration with BBC and the Open University to create a fly-on-the-wall mini-series #ProtectingOurChildren, we wish to explore the practice of child protection from different stakeholders’ perspective.
Child protection represents one of the most challenging and controversial areas of social work practice. Indeed, it often represents the culmination of social workers’ dual mandate of support and safeguarding where on the one hand the objective of social workers and the social services’ intervention is to empower children and their families so that they can achieve their best potential, while, on the other hand they must ensure that children within their jurisdiction are safeguarded against significant harm.
There are many factors that make child protection practice so difficult and controversial, these include:
What is child protection practice? And what does it signify and imply?
In what circumstances is a child subject to a child protection plan?
What happens after a child is made subject to a child protection plan?
Is child protection a helpful practice? If yes how? and in what sense?
Is child protection an intrusive and/or oppressive plan? If yes how? and why?
What are the socio-legal implications of subjecting a child to child protection plan?
Does child protection presuppose and/or require more of an investigative type of social work rather than a supportive social work approach? Is that justified?
Does child protection counter-oppose parent(s)/carer(s) interest and/or priorities vis-à-vis the children’s best interest and/or priorities? Is that correct?
Does child protection practice mitigate risk to children? or does it simply aggravate the divide between families and the social worker?
Join us @SWSCmedia on Tuesday, 14 February at 8:00 PM GMT / 3:00 PM ET / 12:00 PT to explore these and other relevant questions in relation to Child Protection and how to best protect the interest of our children.
You can join our debate by using the hashtag #SWSCmedia.
Also if you are tweeting while watching Protecting Our Children, make sure to include both hashtags: #SWSCmedia #ProtectingOurChildren in order for us to be able to pick up your views.
