Background: Media reports of child deaths as a result of abuse and neglect can influence how children move throughout the foster care system. Using the theoretical frameworks of moral panics and street level bureaucracy, the current study examined how news reports of violent child abuse and neglect cases relate to foster care children with…

We conduct the first quantitative analysis of "blind removals," an increasingly popular reform that seeks to reduce the over-representation of Black children in foster care by eliminating biases in the removal decisions of investigators. We first show that over-representation in most foster care systems is driven by Black children being…

Research ethics committees (RECs) have a crucial role in protecting children in research. However, studies on REC members' perspectives on paediatric research are scarce. We conducted a qualitative study to explore Swedish scientific REC members' perspectives on ethical aspects in applications involving children with severe health conditions. The…

The objective of this paper is to inform a critical analysis of how the media portray family support in Ireland. Findings of a content analysis carried out on national and regional Irish newspapers between 2014 and 2017 are presented which describe communication about family support services provided by Tusla-Child and Family Agency. Results show…

While there is a substantial body of leaving care research, the theorization of care leaving has been more limited. Only a few studies have incorporated a life course perspective, mainly in Global North contexts where life course perspectives may differ significantly from those in the Global South, including Africa. Drawing on findings from a…

The article depicts manifestations of the law in the educational work of renowned Polish-Jewish educator Janusz Korczak, and re-evaluates Korczak's work in terms of children's legal education. It does so in relation to the theoretical insights of Polish-Russian legal sociologist Leon Petrazycki -- and particularly the notion of "Intuitive…

Since the year 2000, most parents have emigrated en masse due to a deepening socio-political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe, leaving their school-going children in the country. This paper assesses the experiences and challenges faced by these Left-Behind Learners (LBL), and ascertain the challenges faced by teachers in meeting the needs of these…

This article focuses on the information that children need to be given when they are moving to a fostering placement. Generally, children are not consulted or informed prior to the foster decisions being made, nor when they arrive at the placement. Therefore, they do not usually know their foster care situation and the changes it implies for their…

Although abundant evidence demonstrates that play is the source of development for preschool-aged children in various cultures, few studies have investigated the role of adult-children collective play in supporting the development of children in institutional care settings. This study examined whether and how a play-based programme created…

The purpose of this paper is to present a reading of child protection and welfare practice in the recent COVID-19 pandemic, with reference to several popular concepts in social work. The focus is on the relevance of these concepts to the contemporary circumstances in which child protection and welfare social workers often now find themselves. The…

Children and youth in contemporary western society spend less time outdoors compared to previous generations. Increased use of technology, lack of green space, and concerns for risk and safety have contributed to a generation of children spending too much time indoors. A disconnection between children and nature has occurred. Our team conducted a…

This study examines the association between the boarding protection/care service models offered by the General Directorate of Social Services and Child Protection Agency and the behavioral and emotional problems children and adolescents under protection or care. The relational scanning model guided the preparation of the study sample. The study's…

The right to basic education of a child is a requirement of human dignity. South Africa, through its new dispensation and conformity with human rights laws, is expected to transform and be consistent with the provision of the Constitution of 1996 that promotes and protects the best interest of the child. However, the current standards in a…

Much as one would like to be able to base permanency decisions on the solid ground of empirical findings and objective knowledge, the nature of child abuse precludes this possibility. In the absence of any unitary knowledge base, it is important to know what knowledge social workers use to inform their permanency decisions. This article presents…

The COVID-19 pandemic shone a light upon the issue of food insecurity in families, with school closures (for most children) drawing concern not simply because of the impact upon pupils' education, but also due to the lack of free school meals available for children in families with low incomes (Lalli, 2021). Since the pandemic, families in the…