Dilemmas in Working in Partnership with the Parents and Relatives of Children Involved in Child Protection Planning

Abstract

This paper considers the currency of the word “partnership” in child protection as it relates to the parents and other relatives of children subject to child protection investigations orprocedures. Parents, it is suggested, are often effectively ignored, or worse, deliberately excluded, once child protection concerns are being addressed. To ignore, however, the families that children were either born to or live with when efforts are made to protect them is, it is suggested, to de‐contextualise their lives. Ultimately indeed it may be to place them at greater peril than exists as the consequences of any abuse. The basis for professional power in child protection is analysed along the dimensions of legal mandate and statutory role, gatekeeping functions and the organisational and professional context in which it operates. Seligman's theory of learned helplessness is employed as a conceptual framework in which to understand the processes by which birth parents and other relatives are likely to become increasingly ineffectual, once child protection procedures are invoked, in participating in a partnership with professionals to promote the best interests of their children. The paper concludes in examining what Sir Henry Maine first described as the move from ‘status’ to ‘contract’ in modern liberal democracies, a process whereby the regulatory functions of traditional kinship systems increasingly have been eroded by the State. It is suggested that only those models of child protection which can effectively begin to reverse this trend are likely to lead to effective partnerships between parents and birth relatives of children who are seen to be at risk, and the various professionals concerned to protect them. The paper concludes in suggesting that good intentions on the part of professionals are necessary but insufficient requirements for partnership; partnership can only effectively be achieved, it is suggested, through a fundamental reform of the legal framework.‐

Key Words:

• Child abuse
• child care
• child care planning
• child care decision making
• child protection
• kin network
• kinship decision making
• partnership
• professional power
• professional.