Child protection systems between professional cooperation and trustful relationships: A comparison of professional practical and ethical dilemmas in England/Wales, Germany, Portugal, and Slovenia

Abstract

This paper explores practical and ethical dilemmas for professionals when securing the protection of children in the complex non-clinical setting of individual families. It is based on a cross-country study on cultural encounters in interventions against child physical abuse and neglect in four countries (England/Wales, Germany, Portugal, and Slovenia). Drawing on national reports of legal-organizational frameworks and socio-cultural backgrounds of European child protection systems, it also presents the results of a series of focus groups with professionals. Data were analysed to identify implicit and explicit discursive constructions as well as normative representations and from this deriving the key ethical issues and dilemmas. Despite a shared normative framework across Europe, intervention cultures vary across the four countries and between the different stakeholder groups. Although each child protection system faced widespread mistrust, policy approaches differ, some relying on strong and detailed guidance whereas others stress professional skill and judgement. We conclude that despite a shared commitment to the protection of children, deliberations and perceived ethical dilemmas suggest interdependency between differences in system cultures and policy approaches that inform the character of professional interventions in the four countries. ------------------------------This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Ethical Dilemmas and Areas of Social Work Intervention in Spain

“…Forty-five-point three percent of the professionals noted dilemmas of this type versus 30.1% of the rest of the workers. These results agree with Meysen and Kelly (2018) who conducted a comparative study between Portugal, England / Wales, Slovenia and Germany, where they point out that the scarcity of resources is clearly influencing a worse attention to children: "professionals in Portugal reflected not only on the precarious conditions of families but also the lack of financial and human resources in institutions like schools and hospitals" (p.4).…”

“…These services are organized and managed in regards to the sections of the population at which they are aimed. The following factors are taken into account, without forgetting the previous contributions of other researchers: health (Goldman & Tabak, 2010;Greene & Kulper, 1990;Kadushin, 2001;Proctor, Morrow-Howell & Lott, 1993;Sparks, 2006), childhood (Meysen & Kelly, 2018), immigrants (Furman, Ackerman, Loya, Jones & Egi, 2012;Mänttarivan der Kuip, 2016), women (Cervantes, 1993;Lindhorst, Macy & Nurius, 2005;Wiech, 2009), family (Handon, 2009), homeless (Banks, 2011;Spijkerboer, van der Stel, Widdershoven & Molewijk, 2017), ethnic minorities (Pergert, Ekblad, Enskär & Biörk, 2008;Van Keer, Deschepper, Francke, Huyghens & Bilsen, 2015), youth (Banks, 2012), prisoners (Baldry & Sotiri, 2009;Toi, 2015), the elderly (Bergeron & Gray, 2003;Fitting, 1986;Smebye, Kirkevold & Engedal, 2016), refugees (Barrero, 1993;Hayes & Humphries, 2004), educational centres (Allen-Meares, 2004;Constable, 2002;Dupper, 2003;Openshaw, 2008;Reamer, 2003;Roberts, 1971;Villarreal, 2017), mental health (Molewijk, Hem & Pedersen, 2015), disability (Donat, 2005;Iacono & Murray, 2003;Wilkins, 2012), and drugs …”

Professional Practice in Child Protection and the Child's Right to Participate

“…Child Protective Services (CPS) professionals have a key role in the assessment process. Meysen and Kelly (2018) explain that assessment involves diverse responsibilities and methods with limited reliability for predicting future developments. Ferguson (2017) brings up an important point here -CPS professionals need to keep the focus of the assessment on the needs of the child, so that the child does not, in a sense, become invisible.…”

Sosyal Hi̇zmet Öğrenci̇leri̇ni̇n Eti̇k Problem Çözme Beceri̇leri̇: Konya Örneği̇

“…4 Bununla birlikte, sosyal hizmet etiğine yönelik literatür; kişisel değerlerle mesleki değerlerin çatışmasından müracaatçının gizliliği, çocuk koruma, evde bakım, dijital medya kullanımı ve palyatif bakıma kadar çeşitli konularda karşılaşılan etik ikilemler (Gallagher vd., 1995;Northern, 1999;Kadushin ve Egan, 2001;Csikai, 2004;McAuliffe, 2005;Goodyear, 2017), etik ikilemlerin çözümü (Reamer, 1999;Dolgoff, Lowenberg ve Harrington, 2005), sosyal hizmet etiğinin tarihçesi (Reamer, 1998;Banks, 2008), etiğe yönelik teorik yaklaşımlar (Healy, 2007;Öztürk, 2009;Weinberg, 2010;Aykara, 2016), sosyal hizmet eğitiminde etik (Gray ve Gibbons, 2007;Edwards ve Addae, 2015;Tuncay, 2017;Collén, 2019) 5 ve araştırma etiği (Buz ve Akçay, 2015;Sobočan, Bertotti ve Strom-Gottfried, 2019) gibi bir çok farklı konuyu içermektedir. Sosyal hizmet literatüründe etik meseleler daha çok teorik tartışmalarla olmakla birlikte, vaka tartışmaları gün geçtikçe artan bir oranda kendine yer bulmaktadır (Banks, 2008;Goodyear, 2017, Meysen ve Kelly, 2018.…”