Chapter 6 is a case study of multilingual communication in social work. It draws on in-depth interviews carried out with eighteen UK social workers. The interviews included vivid accounts of challenging scenarios. In one of them, a child protection team manager had to sit with a family for two hours while trying to contact a Vietnamese interpreter. A different social worker had concerns that human interpreters could fail to convey explicit but crucial details relating to rape and sexual abuse. Machine translation was used in all such cases. Its balance of risks and benefits was sometimes clear. More often, it was highly complex. Two problems raised by the social workers are foregrounded in the chapter. The first is the issue of languages for which both human and technological resources are less abundant. The second concerns additional needs that involve more than a barrier between verbal languages. The chapter draws attention to the practical challenges of navigating cultural and linguistic differences in the provision of social services. It echoes the social workers’ requests for more guidance and support.

We here give a narrative account of Signs of Safety implementation in M, a poorly rated children’s social care department, overseen by a new director. This director worked hard to gain support from parties including department staff, partner agencies and local politicians for the reforms. Staff participated in many meetings about the reform plans and provided feedback, eliciting generally positive comments especially about the value base, but also concerns about Signs of Safety’s emphasis on relying on family networks. Implementation was undertaken using the Signs of Safety’s organisational Theory of Change, involving interconnecting strands of learning, leadership and organisational alignment of policies and procedures, working with partner agencies and oversight mechanisms to monitor use. We detail work undertaken as part of each of these strands, noting that, for illustration, we will apply our detailed evaluation method to some of these causal pathways in later chapters.

We assume that causes contribute to their effects through continuous processes, generally involving intermediate steps. Such processes may be represented by boxes-and-arrows diagrams which express simple ‘theories of change’. We illustrate this using examples from Barbados’s sugar-sweetened beverages tax. The formal relations outlined in Chapter 1 dictate that causation cannot be cyclical. So graphs with cycles needn’t be inconsistent – they just need to be unwound with careful temporal labels to distinguish each time ‘the same’ feature occurs. Developing theories of change often involves starting with relatively simple ones, then testing and refining their contents..

As a further example of our approach, we offer a detailed post-hoc case study of the implementation of the Signs of Safety practice approach in child protection. This is chosen because it has been deployed in multiple places but evidence suggests it is often only partially implemented. Our case study is of a child protection agency M which evidence shows achieved a high standard of implementation. In this case study we had a rich evidence base to work with, both of background research on child protection implementations able to provide evidence from afar of systemic factors that might be causally important and of local evidence available from extensive contemporaneous documentation in M. Our method helps to illustrate and explain the range of changes needed to support Signs of Safety as the organisational practice approach in M.

Very few, if any, causal processes are self-standing – rather, they depend on features of ‘underlying systems’: sufficiently stable physical, socio-economic, legal and cultural conditions that afford such processes (‘mechanisms’ in some New Mechanists’ terms). The underlying system is whatever it is in the world that affords the causal process – a structure exhibiting sufficient stability that affords the causal activities that occur within the process and the principles that govern them. This is illustrated by Rube Goldberg machines and examples from biochemistry, economics and deskilling in child protection. Underlying systems are helpfully understood through assessing their components and features, and the affordances associated with them, with the boundaries of the underlying system considered pragmatically.

Signs of Safety is a ‘strengths-based’ practice framework for child protection, devised to help with maximising child welfare and minimising dangers. In developing this case study about its implementation, we were able to draw upon extant work on challenges in implementing Signs of Safety practice which has highlighted features such as the extent of proceduralisation, oversight reporting mechanisms, the culture around managing uncertainty and organisational leadership as significant in achieving or limiting implementation. Preventing deaths is important but this task should be understood in light of the rarity of, and difficulties with predicting, such tragedies. Extant UK practice has emphasised procedures and oversight as the method for improving practice but this has failed to achieve its goal. It is debated what natures of character and expertise best facilitate child protection work.

The human rights of children are now a standard part of international processes, with the Convention on the Rights of the Child protecting them, following the creation of many national provisions. However, as Linde Lindkvist argues in his chapter, even the achievement of such rights was rooted in an older paternalist conception more about according care for victims than equipping and recognizing agents. On the other hand, human rights politics appealed to some of the most powerful interests in world history, not just the weakest.

While we have already touched on several fields of practice throughout this text, this chapter draws on our own and other authors’ research and experience to go somewhat deeper in relation to three social work practice fields: aged care and working with older people; child protection; and men’s violence against women. We consider some of the current debates that exist within these fields and contextualise them within wider social and political contexts. We acknowledge the challenges for critical practice, particularly when it seems to be at odds with the dominant discourses and associated institutional structures and cultures.

This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the ethical principles and codes of conduct that every researcher in applied linguistics should follow. It emphasizes the importance of ethics in research, ensuring that all studies are conducted with integrity and respect for human rights and welfare. A central focus is placed on informed consent, particularly its role and importance when conducting research with human participants. The chapter discusses various ethical considerations related to data collection, analysis, management, and sharing, while also addressing the responsible reporting of research results. Additionally, unique ethical challenges are explored, especially those that arise when conducting research with children. After reading this chapter, you will be well-prepared to approach your work with a heightened sense of ethical responsibility, ensuring your research is both impactful and respectful of the individuals and communities being studied.

This chapter looks at the Department of Child Safety and the criminal justice system. Child Safety often didn’t understand that a young person had a cognitive disability. Sometimes young people with cognitive disability were abused while they were in Child Safety. Young people with cognitive disability often did not get much help when they left Child Safety. Parents with cognitive disability often had their children removed from them by Child Safety. Some young people were abused by police. Young people with cognitive disability who went to prison didn’t get much help. They also found it hard when they left prison.

This chapter explains principles of safeguarding, the relevant law and statutory framework, the role of the anaesthetist in safeguarding, specific forms of abuse, the safeguarding process for children when concerns arise and the investigation process when a child dies.

This chapter explores the Member States’ use of EU private international family law in the protection of children with links abroad from abuse or neglect by their family. These measures include rules governing the assumption of jurisdiction over the parental responsibility of a child, including both private and public law measures. The chapter argues that the abused and neglected child was not a central focus when regulating the cross-border family and, as a consequence, legal borders between Member States’ family law systems retain considerable significance for these children. Whilst each Member State has provision in place for public law child protection measures, the methods and approach adopted vary significantly between legal systems, as do the potential substantive outcomes for children. The EU’s private international family law rules are designed to obscure these differences and this has presented difficulties in supporting cross-national cooperation over child protection. The political nature of these decisions has meant that focus on the welfare of the child may consequently be lost.

There is no official or universal definition for the concept of ‘family’. The absence of EU legislative competence in the substantive family law field means that there is no ‘EU family law’. Thus it is the individual EU legal instruments in different policy areas and the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the EU that demarcate, on an ad-hoc basis, the contours of the concept of ‘family’ and of related concepts for the purposes of EU law. The chapter argues that in recent years, increasing focus has been directed towards the way EU law addresses diverse family constellations in its laws and policies and how it manages the interaction of different national family law regimes in situations which fall within the scope of application of EU law. It is explained that the EU legislature and, especially, the Court have been faced with a plethora of complicated questions involving family-related matters and – as a result – with the unenviable task of carving out a solution that can be tolerated by all Member States. After identifying some pertinent questions, the chapter proceeds to explain how the chapters in this volume engage with these issues.

One of the most important aspects of human rights law for children is the recognition that the state has positive obligations to protect them from harm, including harm suffered in the home. Child protection is one of the most important areas for protecting children’s rights, but also one of the most difficult. As well as the right to protection from harm, children and parents also have a right to protection of their family life together. This chapter considers the extent to which the law and process of child protection protect the rights of children at risk from harm. It considers the importance of supporting families and the difficulty of deciding when to intervene. It then considers child protection proceedings and the extent to which children’s rights are protected in the law concerning child protection orders. Finally, it considers children’s own perspectives and the extent to which they are heard in the process.

Child protection has been focused on detecting and preventing abuse in Sweden since the 1950s. An extensive and efficient implementation of knowledge on SBS/AHT took place from the late 1990s and intensified during the years from 2002, led by paediatricians, neuroradiologists and ophthalmologists supported by government agencies, the parliament and regional health councils. Shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma was presented in textbooks, professional society’s guidelines, conferences, and teaching. A taskforce for child protection was created by the Swedish Paediatric Society and child protection teams were created subsequently at the university hospitals. A steep increase in infant maltreatment diagnoses occurred concomitant to this implementation, also an increase in out-of-home care for infants with SBS/AHT findings. The SBS/AHT knowledge still prevails in the guidelines by the professional societies. However, a decline in infant maltreatment diagnoses has occurred during recent years, which might indicate a burgeoning de-implementation process related to a decision in Swedish Supreme Court (2014) and the SBU-report on traumatic shaking (2016).

Attachment theory is relevant in decision-making in out-of-home care as children’s early life experiences and relationships affect their wellbeing, sense of security, and future relationships (Bowlby, 1969). This chapter describes the development of attachment theory and key concepts, cultural considerations, use of attachment theory in child protection practice and practice examples of how attachment theory may be misunderstood and misapplied in out-of-home care. Attachment is a theory of how humans develop the capacity to form and maintain emotional relationships, and how these relationships influence our development and sense of self and others. In early life, attachment figures are typically parents, but over the course of development attachments can also form in other significant relationships. Children learn to regulate their emotions and behaviour through the attachment relationship. An attachment figure provides a ‘secure base’ and ‘safe haven’ from which to explore. In response to patterns of interaction, the child forms an attachment type, which is an adaptation to caregiver behaviour.

A growing number of adults with intellectual disability aspire to be parents. The research is conclusive; intellectual disability per se is not a barrier to parenting. Parents with intellectual disability do as well as their non-disabled peers when they are appropriately supported. However like other families in vulnerable contexts when left under-resourced and reliant on discriminatory and/or unsafe support they are highly susceptible to factors that place children at risk. Drawing on international research, this chapter will provide an overview of current knowledge about parents with intellectual disability and their children. The chapter uses a broad definition of intellectual disability which captures two groups of parents. The first is those that were assessed as having intellectual disability as a child and report being in a special class or having classroom support while at school. The other group are those who do not identify as having intellectual disability. This may be because they have never had a formal diagnosis or were not told about it as a child.