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Abstract For many local authority children and family services in the UK faced with the task of responding to children and families facing difficulties and with declining budgets, there is an increasing imperative on how services can respond more effectively to the diverse needs of families on the edge of care. At the same time policy and paradigm shifts have affected the way in which social workers engage with families. This paper is rooted in research commissioned by one local authority that used an innovative visual 'river of experience' co- production approach to understand better the experiences of children and families on their journeys to the edge of care and to inform how statutory services might respond 'better', and possibly earlier, to prevent children being taken into care. The research highlights the gap between assumptions and practices of child and family services and the realities and needs of children and families. The paper discusses these disjunctions and draws out questions to challenge statutory services. In particular, the paper asks why, in spite of serial involvement of professionals, do children still end up in the care system. The paper contributes to current discourses about rethinking child protection, arguing for a different approach to responding to families facing difficulties involving human centred, holistic family support and a more reflexive and relational approach to professional practice. Highlights • The continuing gap between services and the needs of children and families • Children's voices frequently go unheard in statutory professional interventions. • Insufficient attention to emotional/psychological legacy of early neglect • Reiterates the need for re-imagining child protection as family-centred practice • Need for Children and Family services to be flexible and adaptive learning systems [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Learning the lessons from serious child abuse cases can prevent harm in future. • Lack of 'professional curiosity' and 'challenge' are inadequate explanations. • More productive understandings for practice would be communication and courage. • Awareness of the ambiguous policy context is also essential. • Well supported staff and properly resourced services are vital. Learning lessons from cases where children have been killed or seriously harmed from abuse or neglect is important for child protection policy and practice around the world. In England there is a long-established system of locally based, multi-agency reviews. Three recurrent themes over the years have been the poor quality of assessments, shortcomings in inter-agency working and information sharing, and not knowing the children and understanding their experiences. The reviews often identify a lack of 'professional curiosity' and insufficient 'challenge' on the part of child protection practitioners as the cause of these problems. This paper analyses these concepts, drawing on four recent studies of child safeguarding reviews conducted by the authors and their research team. It uses qualitative data from the reports and the views of local professionals in online focus groups. The reviews tend to use the perceived lack of curiosity and challenge as the explanation for poor practice without interrogating why, when and in what circumstances it becomes more difficult for professionals to remain curious and appropriately challenging. Professional curiosity and challenge are complex, multifaceted concepts, and applying them in practice is difficult and skilled work. The paper argues for a more nuanced and grounded understanding of the concepts and their application in practice. It sets them in wider frames of communication and courage, and the ambiguous policy context of a preference for cooperative engagement with families but high expectations about protecting children. It offers recommendations for future research into the review process, authorship style, practice in local agencies and national government policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Families involved in high conflict child custody disputes pose unique challenges for child protection services. Little is known about the struggles faced by child protection workers when responding to complaints made by acrimonious ex-partners within the context of child custody disputes. This paper reports on an exploratory cross-sectional online survey of child protection service providers (n = 208) from five child protection agencies. Results show that the majority of workers expressed feeling higher levels of stress when dealing with families involved in child custody disputes, attributed to repeat allegations and counter allegations, the ongoing acrimony between the parents, pressure from the parents and legal professionals to take sides in the dispute and a lack of protocols to work with families involved in high conflict. The lack of specialized training to work with parents stuck in high conflict and the demands placed on workers, already struggling with large caseloads, contributed to workers feeling overwhelmed and ineffective when working with families entrenched in child custody disputes. Implications are discussed including the need for early identification of high conflict cases, specialized services to address the unique needs of families involved in child custody disputes and increased collaboration between child protection services and external service agencies. Highlights • This study is the first known survey to explore child protection service providers' experiences of working with families involved in child custody disputes. • Workers expressed feeling higher levels of stress when dealing with families involved in child custody disputes. • Workers feel pressure from the parents to take sides in the custody dispute. • The lack of training and standards contribute to the challenges faced by child protection workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decision to substantiate child maltreatment is one of the many complex decisions workers must make daily. Utilizing data from the Ontario Incidence study 2013, this paper examines what child, family and environmental characteristics workers paid attention to when making the determination that a child had experienced maltreatment. This study adds to the Canadian body of research on factors that influence the decision to substantiate maltreatment by exploring the Ontario population. Caregiver risk factors, uncooperative parents, older children, and children with emotional or mental health concerns all increase the likelihood of substantiation. The decision to substantiate current maltreatment was strongly influenced by the workers' assessment of the future risk of maltreatment. Further research is need to explore worker and organizational factors that also influence this risk focus and how much of an influence the current risk assessment tools have on the workers' assessment of future risk and substantiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The gender disparities in DCM vary among different maltreatment subtypes. • DCM's negative effect was more severe for girls than for boys. • Gender heterogeneity is less evident than gender homogeneity in the risk factors. Currently, gender disparities in domestic child maltreatment (DCM) have become an important and highly controversial issue worldwide. This study aims to provide panoramic evidence from China on this issue. Data were derived from a survey of 4,308 children (M age = 12.13, 48.7% were boys) conducted in seven provinces in rural China from June to December 2019. This study used multistage cluster sampling to select respondents, and modified versions of the JVQ Scale and the DSM-5 Scale (11–17 years old) were adopted. This study reached three significant conclusions. First, the gender disparities in DCM vary among different maltreatment subtypes. Compared with girls, boys are more likely to experience physical abuse. A higher prevalence of neglect is observed among girls than among boys. Second, although DCM significantly increased the likelihood of posttraumatic depression for all children, its negative effect was more severe for girls than for boys. Third, gender heterogeneity is less evident than gender homogeneity in the risk factors for DCM. In rural China, children's problematic behaviours, family structure, parents' experiences of childhood violence and family relationships are common predictors of maltreatment for all children. This paper highlights gender differences in the risk of DCM among children in rural China, reveals the Confucian culture behind DCM and gender, and provides Chinese evidence for building an international dialogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neglect is a type of child abuse that leads to a variety of consequences on child development. Although neglect is present in any social class, a lot of parents that live in poverty are not negligent; but poverty has many characteristics that contribute to the presence of neglect. Considering the importance of preventing and better understanding neglect, the present paper aims to describe and discuss similarities and differences among negligent families, comparing them to other families in terms of socioeconomic aspects and risk factors related to neglect. A total of 90 parents of children aged 6–8 years participated in the data collection. They were divided into three groups: (1) 30 caregivers of substantiated cases of child neglect from Child Protection Services; (2) 30 caregivers of suspected cases of child neglect based on teachers' observations, but that were not notified to Child Protection Services; and (3) 30 caregivers of children who were not suspected of child neglect. All participants were interviewed. Results showed that poverty is not a determining factor for neglect, but it presents a highly favorable context for neglect to be expressed. Considering participant's working status, group 1 showed a significant difference (p-value = 0,003) when compared with groups 2 and 3. In groups 2 and 3, most participants worked (53% and 67%), but in group 1 the majority were unemployed. When comparing the groups in relation to educational years, it was noted that groups 1 and 2 were equivalent (average of 4,5 and 5,1 respectively), and significant different (p = 0,001) from group 3 (average of 9,4 years). Considering the social support provided for mothers after their first child was born, 70% of mothers from group 3, 26,7% of mothers from group 2 and 30% from group 1 had support. When comparing the three groups, there were statistical differences (p-valor = 0,001) between group 3 and groups 1 and 2. As for alcohol abuse, groups 1 and 2 had similar results (30% group 1 and 20% group 2) and the groups were statistically different (p-valor = 0,003) from group 3 (0%), indicating that, although they were a minority, there were participants from groups 1 and 2 consuming alcohol. No participant declared to use drugs. Although they live in the same neighborhoods and study in the same schools as do the reference group, groups of children suspected of being neglected had less favorable economic conditions, and their caregivers had fewer years of education and less specialized employment. Presence of risk factors and lack of social support favor the occurrence of child neglect. According to the results obtained by the present study, we must also point out that the condition of poverty is not a determining factor for neglect, but it is presented as a highly favorable context for the expression of neglect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]