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• Personal and professional experiences influence understandings of supervisory neglect. • Importance of culture, personal experiences, and self-awareness in decision-making. • Reconciling professional and personal dimensions for ethical decision-making. This paper addresses how personal and professional values and experiences of professionals working with children and families from diverse cultural backgrounds interweave in their understanding of (in)adequate child supervision and how this influences their decision-making around supervisory neglect. Eleven focus group discussions involving 67 service providers were held in two of the largest cities in the province of Quebec, Canada. Participants were recruited through public school boards, municipal police agencies, child protection agencies, and health and social services. Service providers who were recruited to offer their professional perspective on children's supervision, responded with examples from both their professional and personal contexts. Whereas personal examples, including those related to culture, were used to qualify, contextualize, deepen analysis, and better assess the boundaries of a supervisory situation, professional examples were used to refer to the legal sphere. Besides using professional decision-making tools, service providers could benefit from incorporating their personal experiences to advance reflection about supervisory neglect and from reconciling their professional and personal dimensions for more ethical decision-making in this field. The latter would require clinical (not just administrative) support, a good network of colleagues, and training. Seeking depth and sensitivity beyond what structured decision grids allow is particularly needed in ethnoculturally diverse contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neglect is a complex social problem with serious consequences for the fulfilment of the needs of a child by adults in the child's immediate family and social network - not only parents, but other adults who come into contact with the child (including professionals). However, child protection systems have difficulty taking into account the social nature and the relational complexity of this issue. In fact, they have, consequently, a tendency to concentrate on the parents' deficiencies with regard to their responsibility to their children. This article describes the theoretical foundation of an ecosystemic and developmental model that forms the basis for the development of integrated child neglect services in Quebec, Canada. It also describes the components and activities that aim to operationalise this ecosystemic and developmental model of child neglect. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Key Practitioner Messages: Child neglect is characterised by the collapse of the social organisation surrounding children and their parents., Social action targeting neglect must be based on: an ecosystemic and developmental understanding of the child's needs and the parents' responsibilities;, a participatory approach involving parents and children;, allowance for the parents' experience of their role in the development of their children;, the creation of normative developmental experiences for the children., [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]