Family Participation in Child Protection.

The paper summarizes a Department of Health funded research study of the extent to which parents and children were involved in the child protection work of seven English social services departments. The child protection process and the social work practice with a cohort of 220 consecutive cases is described for the period before the initial conference and the 6 months following it. The authors draw on interview data from parents, young people and social workers and on social work records to assess whether the process and practice were participatory and the extent to which family members were actually involved in the decisions and the work. They concluded that there was benefit for parents and children in attempts to involve them, even thought only 3% of 378 family members were rated as partners in the protection process and a further 13% were rated as participating to a considerable extent. There was a statistically significant association between the participation of family members and the interim outcomes for the parents and children being rated by the researchers as good or moderately good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]