A living document
The article is the starting point for collecting evidence about what needs to change and how it can change. We have tried to keep the article short with links in the text that lead to evidence and with more information on key points in the right hand column.
The initial paper has been prepared quickly for this journal but will continue to grow and change on its home on the website of the Parents, Families and Allies Network (PFAN).
We have included some videos and audio files ...
Perhaps surprisingly, there is no evidence to show that, at the population level, child protection activity of the investigative sort carried out in high income English speaking countries reduces harm to children or promotes well-being. In the a major international study across six countries including England considering neglect and physical maltreatment in children younger than eleven it was found:
no clear evidence for an overall decrease in child maltreatment despite decades of policies designed to achieve such reductions Gilbert et al (2012 p.758)
Research in Western Australia over a fourteen ...
by PFAN steering group
Writing at this time we need to acknowledge what is happening around the world. Anna Gupta’s impassioned editorial for Social Work 2020 under covid-19 lays out how the injustice rightly felt in the Black Lives Matter movement speaks not just to America but to racism in the UK too.
We believe that the child protection system here, in the US and in many other rich English speaking countries, has become a force of oppression for ...