Mental Health Knowledge Gaps in the Child Protection Work with Parents: A Narrative Review of the Social Work Literature

Abstract

This is a narrative review of the latest peer-reviewed social work literature on the child protection work with parents. Aiming to identify knowledge gaps, the study researches the mental health aspects of the implicit or explicit theoretical perspectives underpinning the assessment and intervention with parents. An electronic database search extracted 38 peer-reviewed journal articles. It was found that the theoretical perspectives the publications adopted were the managerial, the critical, the humanistic, the psychodynamic and the behavioural. The study identified mental health knowledge gaps in the assessment and intervention work with parents across all theoretical perspectives and stressed the need for process and effectiveness studies on the work with parents, under explicit theoretical perspectives. The study finally highlights the need for the social work profession to increase its mental health literacy through mental health education for students and practitioners alike.

Keywords:

• parent
• child protection
• social work
• parental mental health
• narrative review

Additional information

Notes on contributors

George Karpetis

George Karpetis is a senior lecturer in Social Work in the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences in School of Social and Policy Studies at the Flinders University. Address: School of Social and Policy Studies, Flinders University, Australia. [email: [email protected]]