This book tackles deep and enduring challenges that confront child protection and child welfare systems across international jurisdictions. Informed by universally applied concepts of child protection typology-building within a systemic framework, it brings together a team of international authors who take a fresh look at country-specific systems of child welfare. The aim of the book is to create more stable and enduring solutions that are culturally responsive to the needs of diverse populations.
Child welfare systems across the globe exist to protect children and support families. Despite a common purpose, they have developed differently over time and across jurisdictions. In Western countries child welfare systems are constantly being reviewed and reformed - the writing of another report describing new structures and processes and a 'new direction' is adopted. This system then operates for a period of time before the process is repeated when the question of system efficacy rises again. Children's services are highly politicised, strongly influenced by waves of media criticism, all of which impact on the stability of child welfare systems and their evolution over time. That so many systems have struggled to give effect to enduring positive reform is indicative of a much more complex set of contemporary problems that confront child protection systems, and the ways in which we understand them.
The book brings together contributions from all regions across the globe that illustrate the diversity of child and family welfare systems - some of which are well established, others in early stages of development. But despite their differences, the chapters share common understandings of systems thinking analysis, and the potential for culturally specific values and beliefs to inform child protection policies and practices in important and creative ways.
There has never been a more important time for the action-based, future-focused analysis presented in Trajectories of Change in Child Protection Systems. The book embraces and intersects universality and country-specific needs and solutions. As such, it is relevant to child welfare policy and practice workers, managers and activists, as well as scholarly audiences and students interested in child and family welfare and children's rights.
Chapter 1 System Change in Child Protection
Part I Development-Focused Change
Chapter 2 Reimagining Child Protection in Kenya Through the Ubuntu Family
Group Conference (UFGC) Model
Chapter 3 The Evolution and Journey of Indias Child Protection System
Chapter 4 Child Protection and Welfare in Pakistan
Chapter 5 From Basic Child Well-Being to Child Protection in China
Chapter 6 Reflections on Development-Focused Change
Part II Reform-Focused Change
Chapter 7 Child Protection and Welfare Systems in the Japanese Cultural
and Religious Contexts
Chapter 8 The New Zealand Child Protection System - a Pacific Response
Chapter 9 Child Protection Systems in Australia - The New South Wales
Experience
Chapter 10 The Child Protection System in Israel: Transformations, Tensions
and Crisis Responses
Chapter 11 The Child Protection System in the United Kingdom
Chapter 12 Indigenous Child Welfare in Canada The Reckoning
Chapter 13 Child Welfare Reform in the USA Evolution or Revolution?
Chapter 14 Reflections on Reform-Focused Change
Part III System-Improvement Change
Chapter 15 A Difficult Balance Between Public and Private Responsibilities:
The Italian Experience
Chapter 16 German Child Protection Throughout Time
Chapter 17 Norwegian Child Protection Policies and Practices: Progressive
Reforms, Persistent Socioeconomic Blind Spots
Chapter 18 Child Welfare in Finland Toward Sustainable Systems
Chapter 19 Reflections on System-Improvement Change
Part IV Conclusion
Chapter 20 Advancing Systemic Change
Marie Connolly, PhD has had professional, academic and consulting careers in child and family welfare, spanning over 40 years, extending across international jurisdictions, including the USA, Canada, Australia, UK, Europe and New Zealand. She has undertaken a number of strategic reviews of child welfare and child protection systems including Norfolk Island and also in South Asian countries. During this time she has provided advice to governments with respect to the development and maintenance of sustainable systems of protection for women, children and vulnerable families. Beginning her career as a social worker in child welfare in 1978, she moved into academia at the University of Canterbury, Aotearoa New Zealand, in 1990 where she focused her research on child protection systems and family group conferencing in child protection. In 2005 she took up the role of Chief Social Worker within the New Zealand government, spearheading practice reforms and providing ministerial advice. Returning to academia in 2010, she was appointed to the Chair in Social Work at the University of Melbourne, Australia. She retired formally from this position in 2019, upon which she was awarded the Hyslop Medal for services to research and practice development. She continues to be affiliated with the University of Melbourne as professor.
Ilan Katz, PhD trained as a social worker in South Africa and has had many years of policy, practice and research experience in children and family services in the United Kingdom and Australia. He started his career as a social worker and manager, working in several local authorities and NGOs in London. He was head of Evaluation, Practice Development and Research at the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in the UK. After spending some time as a civil servant in the Department for Education and Skills, he returned to research to become Deputy Director of the Policy Research Bureau. He joined the Social Policy Research Centre at UNSW Sydney, Australia, in January 2005 and directed the Centre from 2005-2011. He researches in a wide range of social policy areas including child protection, disability, age care, multiculturalism and First Nations policy, Chinese social policy and comparative social policy.
