Child Protection and Child Welfare

Reviews / Votes

Welbourne and Dixon's wide-ranging collection of studies into child protection and child welfare services around the world makes a significant contribution to the academic literature; it also has major implications for policy and practice. This important book should be widely consulted. -- James Midgley, Harry and Riva Specht Professor of Public Social Services, University of California, Berkeley, USA The chapters in this edited collection capture the global diversity of ways of thinking about children and the role of the state in promoting their welfare and protecting them. The authors set out to make sense of this diversity and in their commitment to an international perspective not only do they help us think more critically and reflexively about children, family life and child protection they also require us to engage with the very different life circumstances of children globally. As the authors argue, child welfare and child protection are international issues that should be of concern to all of us not just because the lives lived by children are so varied, often marked by extreme socio-economic disadvantage and exploitation, but also because historical and contemporary patterns of migration have rendered visible very different ideas of what constitutes a "good" family life, the rights of children and families, family privacy, what it is to be a child and how children should be cared for. -- Jeremy Roche, Dean and Director of Studies, Faculty of Health and Social Care, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK This is an ambitious and rigorously constructed book that examines how the historical, cultural, political and economic context affects child welfare and child protective services in 11 different countries from different regions around the globe. It will be invaluable for all those who want to analyse and critically review these services to help inform these areas in their own country, and understand the similarities and differences in these important areas worldwide. -- Brian Littlechild, Professor of Social Work, University of Hertfordshire, UK