Can a Paradigm Shift from Risk Management to Critical Reflection Improve Child-Inclusive Practice?

Christine Morley, Joanne Clarke, Chez Leggatt-Cook and Donna Shkalla
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Christine Morley: School of Public Health and Social Work, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD 4059, Australia
Joanne Clarke: School of Public Health and Social Work, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD 4059, Australia
Chez Leggatt-Cook: UnitingCare Community, Brisbane, QLD 4006, Australia
Donna Shkalla: UnitingCare Community, Brisbane, QLD 4006, Australia

Societies, 2021, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-17

Abstract: Child protection systems within Anglophone countries have been increasingly dominated by neoliberal managerial, risk-dominant paradigms over the past three decades. Assumed to deliver a cost-effective strategy to increase the safety of children, there are many ways this paradigmatic combination systematically undermines child welfare, participation, and well-being. This paper specifically focuses on the ways that risk assessment, neoliberal, and managerial discourses have infiltrated practice and operate to silence and exclude children’s voices. It draws on two case studies to showcase key findings of a comprehensive, state-wide research project called Empowering Children’s Voices, which was initiated by UnitingCare, a non-government organisation within Queensland, Australia, and conducted in partnership with researchers from Queensland University of Technology. It will be argued that a paradigm shift towards a critically reflective reinterpretation of risk can be far more effective at promoting child-inclusive practice and establishing children’s empowered voices as a protective factor against harm.

Keywords: critical reflection; critical practice; child-inclusive practice; child protection; risk assessment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 A14 P P0 P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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