Trajectories of Change in Child Protection Systems

This book is about development, reform and sustainability in child protection systems. Tackling deep and enduring challenges that confront child protection and child welfare systems across international jurisdictions, the book addresses two critical questions – why is it so difficult to develop and sustain responsive systems of child protection? And what can be done to support effective system reform? Informed by universally applied concepts of child protection typology-building within a systemic framework, this book brings together a team of international authors who take a fresh look at the concept and realities of change in country-specific child protection systems. Exploring these experiences, the editors identify three broad approaches to change: Development-Focused Change; Reform-Focused Change; and System-Improvement Change. Based on this analysis, they argue that stable and enduring solutions that are culturally responsive to the needs of diverse populations will not be found through repetitive processes of critique, review and reform. What is needed, whether the system is newly or well established, is an in-depth understanding of systemic change itself and the practical ways in which this influences a system trajectory in both positive and negative ways. This book addresses this need. The challenging environment within which child protection exists and the significant costs of developing, reforming and maintaining child protection systems, creates a critical imperative in contemporary systems of child protection for an understanding of effective reform, and a need to learn from other systems about how effective reform can be sustained. Given the ubiquitous nature of welfare reform, there has never been a more important time to apply a systemic lens. Mapping trajectories of change, the authors of the 15 country-specific-chapters of this contributed volume provide a uniquely different approach to the task of developing, reforming and maintaining child protection systems. Trajectories of Change in Child Protection Systems is relevant reading for child welfare policy and practice workers, managers and activists, as well as scholarly audiences and students interested in child and family welfare and children's rights.