Consistent child protection policy: pia desideria or achievable goal

• Authors: SHMIDT Victoria
• Year of publication: 2011
• Type: Appeared in Conference without Proceedings
• MU Faculty or unit: Faculty of Social Studies
• Description: Ideally child protection operates as the continuity of the following stages: 1) prevention; 2) enforced treatment with the family in cases of direct threat to the health and safety of child; 3) after-crisis care. The high degree of consistency among stages holds prevention priority and increases the chances to of family survival. The balance between child safety and privacy/family autonomy operates as the adhesive ground of this continuity: in each of the stages, balance is achieved through particular practices and regulations. Prevention provides alternatives to residential care by mixing familialisation and defamilialisation strategies for key risk groups (children with SEN, in conflict with law, from vulnerable families). The essentials of enforced treatment are the variety of measures for limitation of parental rights and the wide repertoire of parent-child contact regulation (in order for there to be a chance at family reunification). The establishment of monitoring under services redirects crisis intervention from the focal point on obligation of parents to share responsibilities between services and families. Efficient after-crisis care is based upon the diversity of child placement providing either child safety (foster/ residential care) or family autonomy (kinship care / adoption/ family reunification). Post-transit countries are distinguished by various shortcomings regarding child safety - privacy balance and as a result the inconsistency of intervention. Mostly, public care reform is focused on residential settings being cut, but the humanisation of enforced treatment, as well as the encouragement of child placement diversity, the responsibility of services advance are missed. Developed countries demonstrate a diversity of strategies for achieving child safety - privacy balance: Anglo-Saxon countries provide it as the dilemma solving process through contesting procedures (incorporating international law into national legislation); Scandinavian countries bring into action the services-families’ negotiation model; corporatist social policy interprets the balance as an equilibrium between a child's right to be heard and parents’ power. The access of transit countries to this experience is stipulated by the systemic exploration of legal norms and institutional design in a comparative historical context.