Culture and Child Protection: Reflexive Responses

By: Tony Ward and Marie Connolly and Yvonne Crichton-Hill

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Synopsis: Providing services that are culturally relevant is an ongoing challenge for practitioners, managers, and policy-makers within the social services. Culture and Child Protection is a concise exploration of the close links between social service practices and cultural values which offers a culturally sensitive model of child protection practice. The authors demonstrate the ways in which a combination of personal, professional and societal attitudes often influence practice decisions. In a context where children from ethnic minorities dominate the welfare statistics of the Western economies, the authors argue against a reliance on rigid approaches to working with particular ethnic groups. They propose effective alternative strategies that will assist social workers in responding appropriately to diverse cultural needs and circumstances. Implications of cultural difference are also considered with respect to class, socio-economic group, gender and age, reinforcing the need to recognise broader interpretations of difference within practice. This book is full of integrated examples and case studies and also discusses wider practice issues, such as working with offenders, the impact of funding restraints and the dynamic of reflexivity in practice and supervision. Culture and Child Protection is a key text that will help social workers and culture academics to understand the ways in which cultural thinking affects and shapes child protection practice.