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Child protection continues to be a pressing social problem. Robust and relevant research is essential in order to ensure that the scale and nature of child maltreatment are understood and that preventative and protective measures are effective. This paper reports selected results from a mapping review of research conducted in the UK and published between January 2010 and December 2014. The purpose of the review was twofold: to develop a typology of child protection research; and to use this typology to describe the features and patterns of empirical research undertaken recently in the UK in order to inform a future research agenda. The paper reports the maltreatment types, substantive topics and research designs used within empirical research published in academic journals. It identifies a number of challenges for the field including the need for conceptual clarity regarding types of abuse, greater methodological diversity and a shift of focus from response to prevention of child maltreatment. The importance of a national strategic agenda is also emphasised. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Key Practitioner Messages A substantial proportion of empirical research focuses on child maltreatment generally and less is known about some specific types of maltreatment such as exposure to domestic abuse and child trafficking., More robust evidence is particularly needed concerning the effectiveness of interventions and choice of preventative approaches., Research-minded practitioners have an important contribution to make to the development of a practice-relevant research agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Risk of maltreatment from combined toxic trio factors a dominant concept in UK child protection. • Systematic review found 20 papers. • Evidence base lacks definition of key measures, intersectionality analysis or theoretical basis. • Other key risk factors, especially family socio-economic circumstances, excluded. • Need to rebuild the evidence base and rethink the focus of policy and practice. The term 'toxic trio' was coined to describe the risk of child abuse and neglect stemming from a combination of domestic violence, parental mental health issues and/or learning disability, and parental alcohol and/or drug misuse (Brandon, 2009). Although concerns about the language have been raised in some quarters, it has become a dominant reference point in children's social care in England and, to an extent, internationally over the past two decades. It has become embedded in the family justice system, child protection assessment processes and national data collection. There is evidence that each factor in isolation can lead to worse child outcomes, although this is of mixed quality and far from comprehensive. This article reports the results of a systematic review of evidence relevant to the relationship between the 'toxic trio' factors in combination and child maltreatment, identifying 20 papers. Despite the term's currency, we found little quality evidence of the incidence of the 'trio' factors in child maltreatment, little consideration of intersectionality and almost no theoretical examination of the supposed relationships. Such studies as have been conducted have too rarely taken into account, or controlled for, contextual factors, such as the socioeconomic circumstances or the ethnicity of the families, or children's ages. The discrepancy between the priority given to the 'toxic trio' and the paucity of the evidence-base makes a case for a shift away from over-simplified attributions of parental risk in policy and practice, and towards greater attention being given to other significant factors for child protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]