Responding to information about children in adversity: Ten years of a differential response model in Western Australia

The Analogy of Child Protection as Public Health: An Analysis of Utility, Fit, Awareness, and Need

“…The sense that statutory services are reserved for children who have experienced the worst maltreatment at the hands of the purportedly worst parents after all else has failed has been reinforced by the creation of parallel systems designed to keep families away from statutory services. In Australia, networks of (ostensibly secondary) nonstatutory service providers have been funded to divert children away from statutory services (Harries et al 2014;Valentine and Katz 2015), as if the problem is service provision rather than maltreatment. Elsewhere, differential, dual-track, or multiple-track responses have been implemented.…”

Community sidelined: The loss of community focus in differential response

“…Although there is evidence that the subject of community, central to DR at inception, is integrated into DR programming on the ground, a review of the American literature—which is the focus of this paper—reveals that recent DR literature has focused largely on operations and implementation from an agency perspective. Some of key debates in this context include ongoing discussion about whether DR adequately protects the safety of children (English, Wingard, Marshall, Orme, & Orme, ; Loman & Siegel, , ; Winokur, Ellis, Drury, & Rogers, ), the cost of DR programs compared to investigative response (QIC‐DR, ; Winokur et al, ), how the level of risk is determined (Alaggia, Gadalla, Shlonsky, Jenney, & Daciuk, ; Harries, Cant, Bilson, & Thorpe, ; Merkel‐Holguin & Bross, ), and parent or guardian perceptions of the service delivery method (Merkel‐Holguin, Hollinshead, Hahn, Casillas, & Fluke, ). Our interest is in the role of community in DR, a topic that has received little attention in recent literature.…”

“…investigative response (QIC-DR, 2014;Winokur et al, 2015), how the level of risk is determined (Alaggia, Gadalla, Shlonsky, Jenney, & Daciuk, 2015;Harries, Cant, Bilson, & Thorpe, 2015;Merkel-Holguin & Bross, 2015), and parent or guardian perceptions of the service delivery method (Merkel-Holguin, Hollinshead, Hahn, Casillas, & Fluke, 2015). Our interest is in the role of community in DR, a topic that has received little attention in recent literature.…”