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Child Protection Anxieties and the Formation of UK Child Welfare and Protection Practices

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Discourses of Anxiety over Childhood and Youth across Cultures

Abstract

The history of child protection in the UK has had little critical attention yet twenty-first century childhoods and child care practices in the UK have been significantly influenced by what has been termed as the ‘child protection industry’. This paper argues that whilst statutory services have expanded then contracted, children’s charities have remerged as the most influential voices that have shaped twenty-first century child protection policy and practice. A combination of the emphasis of risk to children and young people, and tragedies in which statutory services have had a part, has produced a ‘toxic’ culture of child protection in which Social Work with children and families seems to have lost its moral compass and its earlier emphasis on family support. Suspicion of parents and an emphasis on child rescue is now a dominant paradigm. Equally parents are suspicious of social workers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

    Gary Clapton

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  1. Gary Clapton
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Correspondence to Gary Clapton .

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  1. Department of Communication and Media Studies, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece

    Liza Tsaliki

  2. Department of Communication and Media Studies, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece

    Despina Chronaki

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Clapton, G. (2020). Child Protection Anxieties and the Formation of UK Child Welfare and Protection Practices. In: Tsaliki, L., Chronaki, D. (eds) Discourses of Anxiety over Childhood and Youth across Cultures. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46436-3_4

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