Child protection and welfare: cultures, policies, and practices

Abstract

Child protection and welfare have become international issues in a globalized world. Ideas about childhood and the upbringing of children vary widely, depending upon the prevailing economic, socio-cultural, religious, and political contexts. These have had dramatic effects on the way societies value children, and the role acquired by the state in their protection and advancing their well-being. Children, however, remain at risk. They are placed at risk by the breakdown of extended family systems as a result of urbanization, and as a result of impaired functioning of some nuclear families, in the absence of kinship safety nets. Some traditional cultural practices place children at risk, especially girl children. Poverty creates risks for all children but it can create specific catastrophic risks for girls. Countries can enact visionary laws intended to protect children, but they will be ineffective against entrenched social attitudes, especially if only limited resources can be provided to implement and enforce them. This is the ultimate challenge that the world community must address if the vision of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is to be realized.

La protection et le bien-être des enfants sont devenus des questions d'importance internationale dans un monde globalisé. Les idées concernant les enfants et la promotion de leur développement varient entre les pays selon le contexte économique, socio-culturel, religieux, et politique. Ces contextes ont des conséquences sur la manière dont les sociétés valorisent les enfants, le rôle de l'Etat dans leur protection ainsi que la responsabilité qu'il s'accorde pour faire progresser leur bien-être. Les enfants, toutefois, sont toujours à risque dans chaque pays. Ils sont mis en péril par l’éclatement géographique des familles, conséquence de l'urbanisation, et en raison d'une dépréciation du fonctionnement de quelques familles nucléaires suite à la perte de la sécurité autrefois fournie par la famille élargie. Certaines pratiques culturelles traditionnelles placent les enfants en situation de risque, notamment les filles. La pauvreté créée des risques pour tous les enfants mais elle peut aussi créer des risques catastrophiques pour les filles. Les pays peuvent adopter des lois visionnaires destinées à protéger les enfants mais elles seront inefficaces contre les préjugés sociaux tenaces, surtout si les ressources de l'Etat qui peuvent être fournies pour les mettre en œuvre sont circonscrites. C'est l'ultime défi auquel la communauté mondiale doit s'attaquer si la vision de l'UNCRC doit être réalisée.

Keywords:

• child rights
• child protection
• child welfare
• child abuse
• child neglect

Mots-clés:

• droits de l'enfant
• protection de l'enfant
• bien-être des enfants
• maltraitance et négligence

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Penelope Welbourne BSc (Psychology), MA (Child and Family Law), MSc (Social Policy and Social Work) is Associate Professor of Social Work at Plymouth University. She was a social worker and social work manager prior to becoming a senior lecturer at Plymouth University in 2000. Her areas of interest for teaching and research concern comparative social work; child protection; developing professional practice post-qualification, and public law proceedings. Her current research is a Nuffield Foundation funded study into the role of the Official Solicitor and the courts in protecting the rights of parents lacking litigation capacity in care proceedings.

John Dixon B Econ, M Econ, Ph.D. (Public Administration and Management), FAcSS, is Professor of Public Administration in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. He is a fellow of the British Academy of the Social Sciences, and an honorary life member of theAmerican Phi Beta Delta Honor Society for International Scholars. He has published very extensively in the fields of international public and social policy and administration. His areas of research interest concern comparative social policy, public management, and a critique of neoliberalism.

Notes

1. This was defined by Bowlby (1951, p. 423) as situations where a family has never been established (illegitimacy), a family is intact but dysfunctional (parental poverty, incapacity, or psychopathy), or a family has broken up and not functioning (parental death, desertion, separation, hospitalization, imprisonment, or relocation due to employment, war, or famine).

2. All the national interpretative declarations and reservations are recorded on the UNCRC treaty web pages. All quoted interpretative declarations and reservations below are available at: http://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=IV11&chapter=4&lang=en.