A recommendation from the Social Work Task Force was that all employers of social workers should conduct a regular "health check" of the social work profession to learn from practice as part of a continuous cycle of improvement. This article documents how the London Borough of Tower Hamlets has gone about this. I describe the…

This paper presents the first results of a large-scale research project on the child protection services in Tenerife, Spain. In Study 1, the professional beliefs and practices of 152 child protection workers, as measured by a Professional Beliefs and Practices Questionnaire, were correlated with their scores on the Maslach Burnout Inventory.…

The Signs of Safety approach to child protection has been gaining prominence around the world and this approach has developed through learning from good practice. Generally, examples of good practice are derived from adults who pose a risk to children, while this paper outlines an example of good practice that engages an adolescent in building a…

To enhance strengths-based service, a large urban child welfare agency in Ontario, Canada implemented part of the Signs of Safety (SOS) model in 2010. SOS was created to engage families involved with the child welfare system, and is rooted in the beliefs of collaboration, strengths-based practice, and safety. The hybrid of the full SOS model…

This article describes a strengths-based approach to supervised visitation within the child welfare system of the United States. Supervised visitation gives parents accused of abuse or neglect the opportunity to spend time with children temporarily removed from their care. Although supervised visitation has the potential to be a tool for promoting…

Child welfare providers are increasingly required to demonstrate that strengths-based, evidence-informed practices are central to their intervention methodology. This case study describes how a large child welfare agency instituted cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) as the core component of a strength-based practice model with the goal of…

Working from practice experiences, Social Work educators from Aotearoa/New Zealand, Norway and Western Australia have developed a framework for child welfare work . The framework brings together the Rights of the Child, Community Development and Child Protection. This article describes the principles and theoretical underpinnings of this…

Child maltreatment remains a serious social problem, with neglect arguably the most pernicious manifestation. Neglect is characterised by a chronic failure to provide for a child's basic needs and often co-exists with other forms of maltreatment. It usually occurs in a complex social environment where socio-economic disadvantage is rife and…

Child protection workers must determine under what conditions a child should be sustained within the family system. A standard that is often referred to is "good enough" parenting or minimal parenting competence. Research and clinical literature fails to offer workers guidance on the practical application of this terminology. Such…

African children who care for sick or dying adults are receiving less than optimal support due to confusion about whether or not young caregiving constitutes a form of child labour and the tendency of the authorities to play it "safe" and side with more abolitionist approaches to children's work, avoiding engagement with support…

Street children are the most excluded group of people in any society. The general attitude towards them is to criminalise and pathologise. The "To-gather with Children Project" (TCP) has been developed by the Maltepe University Research and Application Centre for Street Children (SOYAC) in Istanbul and implemented in conjunction with the General…

Children in foster care often have no means of influencing matters that concern them, and can easily become outsiders in their own lives. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child enshrines the rights of capable children to express their views freely in matters affecting them and to be heard in any judicial or administrative…

The outcomes for children in kinship care are generally seen as positive in terms of identity formation, stability of placement, behavioural and mental health outcomes, enabling siblings to live together and child protection. However, there is some disquiet about the length of time children stay with relatives; agencies are not sure about how best…

This article takes Dixon and Scheurell's framework for understanding colonisation processes within social welfare policies and applies it to child welfare for Indigenous populations in the United States and Norway. While those countries' historical child welfare policies follow Dixon and Scheurell's hypotheses regarding colonisation, each nation…

A growing concern for child welfare is how preparation for adulthood programmes can be strengthened to more effectively meet the needs of youth in out-of-home care. There is a gap in our knowledge about how young adults in out-of-home care in Africa are prepared for their transition to adulthood. The present study adds to the current body of…