scholarly journals Complexity Theory: Developing New Understandings of Child Protection in Field Settings and in Residential Child Care

2008 ◽  
Vol 38 (7) ◽  
pp. 1320-1336 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. Stevens ◽  
P. Cox
Keyword(s):  
Child Care ◽  
Complexity Theory ◽  
Child Protection ◽  
Residential Child Care

scholarly journals SYSTEMIC REFLEXIVITY IN RESIDENTIAL CHILD CARE: A PEDAGOGICAL FRAME TO EMPOWER PROFESSIONAL COMPETENCE

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (4.2) ◽  
pp. 115-139
Author(s):  
Laura Formenti ◽  
Allessandra Rigamonti
Keyword(s):  
Child Care ◽  
Transformative Learning ◽  
Child Protection ◽  
Professional Competence ◽  
Active Listening ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Professional Work ◽  
Self Directed Learning ◽  
Cultural Backgrounds ◽  
Residential Child Care

This position paper offers a pedagogical frame to empower professional work in residential child care. Jobs in this demanding field are characterized by daily relationships with children of different ages, needs, and cultural backgrounds. There is a need for effective communication and interaction with them, their families, co-workers, other professionals, and care agencies, as well as with the larger community. This complexity brings uncertainty and the necessity of thinking and acting in a sensitive way in order to open possibilities for systemic transformation at the micro, meso, and macro levels. In this framework, we focus on reflexivity as a meta-competence — a set of specific postures, competences, and attitudes that characterize expert professional action. A thorough literature review on reflexivity in social work and child protection is aimed at clarifying the meanings, uses, and features of this concept. We claim that systemic reflexivity can be used as a framework, a methodology, and a set of tools to empower professional work by enhancing emotional, cognitive, and epistemic self-awareness, systemic wisdom, abduction, and active listening. To help workers and teams develop these five competences, a self-directed learning module is currently being designed, based on systemic and narrative perspectives, and transformative learning theory.

scholarly journals The Halls Creek Way of Residential Child Care: Protecting Children is Everyone's Business

2013 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 61-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kylie A. Hodgkins ◽  
Frances R. Crawford ◽  
William R. Budiselik
Keyword(s):  
Child Care ◽  
Child Protection ◽  
Care Facility ◽  
Models Of Care ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
Community Research ◽  
Aboriginal Community ◽  
Community Acceptance ◽  
Out Of Home Care ◽  
Residential Child Care

This paper describes the collaboration between an Aboriginal community and Western Australia's (WA) Department for Child Protection (DCP) in designing and operating a residential child care facility in a predominantly Aboriginal community. Research literature has established that the effective operation of child protection systems in remote Aboriginal communities requires practitioners and policy-makers to have awareness of local and extra-local cultural, historical and contemporary social factors in nurturing children. This ethnographic case study describes how a newspaper campaign heightened public and professional awareness of child abuse in the town of Halls Creek, in WA's Kimberley region. With its largely Aboriginal population, Halls Creek lacked the infrastructure to accommodate an inflow of regional people. Homelessness, neglect and poverty were widespread. Within a broader government and local response, DCP joined with community leaders to plan out of home care for children. Detailed are the importance and complexities of negotiating between universal standardised models of care and local input. Strategies for building positive relationships with children's family while strengthening both parenting capacity and community acceptance, and use of the facility are identified. Key to success was the development of a collaborative ‘third-space’ for threading together local and professional child protection knowledge.

Evaluating Residential Child Care in England

2000 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-216
Author(s):  
Leslie B. Whitbeck
Keyword(s):  
Child Care ◽  
Residential Child Care

Residential child care in practice

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Smith ◽  
Leon Fulcher ◽  
Peter Doran
Keyword(s):  
Child Care ◽  
Residential Child Care

Essence and Scope of Strengthening Community-Based Preventive Child Care and Protection Systems in India

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ranjan Kanti Panda ◽  
Lopamudra Mullick ◽  
Subhadeep Adhikari ◽  
Neepa Basu ◽  
Archana Kumari
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Child Care ◽  
Child Protection ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
National Level ◽  
Family Care ◽  
Children At Risk ◽  
Development Organization ◽  
Sectoral Development ◽  
Family Based

This article reflects different programmes and resource components that may be promoted to keep children with either their own family or within alternative family care, satisfying the rights of their overall development. In India, the concept of promoting family-based care mechanisms through government systems has not been fully realised, owing to lack of synergy between resource allocation and existing government programmes, policies and plans of action for child protection. Additionally, the common public discourse is that Child Care Institutions (CCIs) offer suitable care and protection for children outside the parental care. CCIs continue to be identified as the ultimate and the most common response for children at risk. This practice nullifies the scope to explore opportunities for the child to live with their family or in any alternative family care mechanisms. Child in Need Institute (CINI), 1 1 CINI is a national level development organization working on establishing child-friendly communities through its work on health, nutrition, child protection and education for the last forty-five years in India. partnering with Hope and Homes for Children, have analysed the vulnerability factors that led children to arrive at the selected CCIs in Ranchi and Khunti districts of Jharkhand in India. While working with children in the communities, CINI endeavoured to understand the drivers and vulnerabilities leading to family/child separation and what mechanisms could address the vulnerabilities at source and prevent separation. CINI promoted a participatory governance process with the involvement of community-level institutions along with children’s and women’s groups, incubating safe spaces for children that aided in identifying, tracking and promoting multi-sectoral development plans for children at risk. 

“Depends who it is”: Towards a relational understanding of the use of adult-child touch in residential child care

2021 ◽  
pp. 147332502199087
Author(s):  
Lisa Warwick
Keyword(s):  
Child Care ◽  
Adult Child ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
Relational Practice ◽  
Residential Child Care ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
Contextual Understanding ◽  
Emergent Literature

This article theorises adult-child touch in residential child care as a relational practice, contributing to an emergent literature on residential child care, and conceptualises residential child care as a Lifespace. It responds to an on-going debate surrounding the use of touch in the sector, which has attracted academic attention since the early 1990s as a result of abuse scandals, the ensuing ‘no touch’ policies and a growing body of research identifying touch as an important aspect of child development. The paper draws upon a six-month ethnographic study of residential child care, which was explicitly designed to observe everyday interactions between residential care workers and young people. The findings suggest that touch cannot be discussed in isolation from either relationships or a contextual understanding of relationships in the specific context of residential child care. The study found that touch is unavoidable, relational and that dichotomous understandings of touch continue to present issues for both theory and practice.

Ghana's Children's Act 560: A Rethink of its Implementation?

2011 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick McCrystal ◽  
Esmeranda Manful
Keyword(s):  
Child Care ◽  
Child Protection ◽  
Professional Training ◽  
Social Care ◽  
Legal Protection ◽  
Initial Step ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Rights Of The Child ◽  
Administrative Framework ◽  
The Law

AbstractIn 1998 Ghana harmonised its child care legislation to conform to the Convention on the Rights of the Child by enacting the Children's Act 1998, Act 560. Some stakeholders expressed misgivings at its capacity to ensure child protection, but little literature exists on the views of professionals working within the law. This paper presents an investigation of the views of professionals who are mandated to work within the law to ensure the rights of the child to legal protection in Ghana. The findings suggest that there is a gap between legal intent and practice. It is concluded from these findings that for better child protection, the provision of legal rights for children is only an initial step; the administrative framework including better professional training, adequate resources for social care agencies and the establishment of new structures also needs to be reconsidered.

scholarly journals Care Ethics in Residential Child Care: A Different Voice

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Steckley ◽  
Mark Smith
Keyword(s):  
Child Care ◽  
Care Ethics ◽  
Residential Child Care
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