How to Protect Children? A Pragmatic Approach: On State Intervention and Children’s Welfare

If a child’s well-being is at risk of considerable harm within their own family, state institutions usually intervene. In severe cases, the parents’ right to rear is suspended. Cases of risk assessment and potential state intervention are decided within a conflict between parents’ rights and claims of children for protection. There is, we argue, a standard model of normative assessment underlying these decisions: It rests on premises rooted in classic liberal political philosophy, which is prevalent in many Western societies, such as a strong commitment to individualism, a separation of private and public, or a conceptualization of children as lacking the status of full right holders. We proceed in three steps. Based on cases in social work and child welfare offices, firstly, the article proposes an inductive approach to describe the problem. Second, we point out the most critical problems and shortcomings of the standard model. On this basis, third, we develop an alternative, pragmatistic perspective on child welfare and state intervention. It argues that child welfare must be understood more broadly as a societal concern than merely as a matter of the legitimacy of state intervention. A practice-oriented section follows to show what conclusions can be drawn from our alternative model.


Introduction
If a child's well-being is seriously threatened within their own family, and parents 1 are unwilling or unable to protect them, state institutions are called to action. In most Western societies, decisions about when intervention is necessary and justified are based on a normative standard model rooted in classic liberal ideas (e.g., in child welfare law in Germany). It rests on the premise that parents are free to rear their children and that they have a right to privacy without governmental interference unless there are cases of maltreatment or abuse, which are understood as violations of children's welfare interests. State intervention to protect child well-being thus needs a strong justification, since the family is a protected sphere. In recent decades, political philosophers have reflected on this model critically, have expanded it, or presented alternatives. (Archard 2014(Archard , 2018Brighouse and Swift 2014).
Our aim in this paper is to join these critical voices and argue that the liberal model is an inadequate normative backdrop for deciding about state interventions. We approach the issue by analyzing cases in social work with an inductive method, i.e., introducing the practical, real-life context before theorizing. By examining three cases, we shall question the standard model and provide an alternative pragmatist point of view, which expands the standard model while not radically breaking with it. Rather, we hope to provide a richer alternative and broader interpretation of the social and political context in which decisions on child welfare take place. We also focus less on ideal solutions (as liberalism often does) but understand conflict management as a constant learning process for all participants. As a philosophical tradition, pragmatism is currently enjoying increasing popularity because it questions some of the fundamental dualisms of classical theories and thus opens a perspective that is more strongly oriented towards practical, real-life contexts, experiences, and their improvement. In comparing the standard model and the pragmatist-oriented approach, we shall argue, lies a potential for innovative philosophical reflection on child welfare and state intervention.
Like the proverbial tip of the iceberg, analyzing the normative and political conflict between state intervention and the autonomy of parents leads us to many other questions of ethics and political philosophy, such as the status and value of childhood, justice within families, rights of parents, children's rights, justification of paternalistic intervention, care ethics, educational ideals, and goals (Matthews and Mullin 2020). Even though the literature on these topics has been growing in the last three decades, mainstream political philosophy still does not have to say much about justice for children and justice within the family (Drerup and Schweiger 2019). Much more detailed analyses can be found in social work theory, legal theory, or sociology (Brown et al. 1997;Gitterman 2001). In this paper, we start from 1 3 How to Protect Children? A Pragmatic Approach: On State… the assumption that the normative status of childhood and child well-being is a concern for political philosophers, which needs to get more attention in the discussion. The way that childhood and children's well-being are conceptualized tells us a great deal about the idea of citizenship and human development in a society, and it draws our focus on issues of discrimination, disadvantage, and exclusion that are often deep-seated and implicit, e.g., a form of ageism against that can be called "adultism" (LeFrançois 2014) or "childism" (Young-Bruehl 2012).
The paper proceeds in three steps. The first part asks how the problem of potential state intervention to protect children's welfare arises in actual cases taken from reports by child welfare services and social workers. This inductive approach is intended to show the complexity of the problem and to sketch the background of what we call 'the standard model' against which philosophical questions should be addressed. In the second step, central normative concepts that shape this model will be reconstructed. With reference to the cases, we will show which normative problems arise from the standard model while raising the question how alternative perspectives can help to reshape the issue of intervention. In the third part of the article, we argue that philosophical pragmatism can provide interesting impulses for rethinking the debate on child welfare and state intervention. We claim that pragmatism can help open an alternative theoretical perspective on implicit conflicts and point to possible ways of dealing with child protection. Taking up this impulse, we develop suggestions for improving practical contexts and politics.

Case Examples: An Inductive Approach
Philosophical reflections often remain on the theoretical level. For instance, ethical analysis deals with the justification of universal normative principles. In the context of an empirical turn within humanities and philosophy, this approach has been increasingly questioned by raising the question of whether social reality with its complex dynamics and contradictions can be adequately grasped in this way. Pragmatism, in contrast, begins philosophical reflections with the observation and reconstruction of (heterogeneous) worlds of experience to develop philosophical interpretations of society, which arise from and in close interrelation with these practices. Following this approach, we begin our reflections inductively with a few selected case studies. 2 Lydia (5 years old): Lydia's kindergarten teacher reported the following observations to child services over the phone: Lydia has come in with bruises on her arm. She stated that her mum did this. Her mother, Lydia said, had become angry because she had not been "a good kid" In the past, the kindergarten teacher heard that Lydia and her younger sister (Alina, 3 years old, same kindergarten) watch a lot of TV and secretly play age-inappropriate video games on the PlayStation of their older brother Frank (11 years old). Frank has never been very affectionate with the younger girls. Both younger siblings lacked hygiene and showed developmental deficits, Lydia wetted herself from time to time, and Alina still wore nappies. Both girls rarely got anything to eat, mostly chips or milkshakes, sometimes pasta. Other mothers reported that the mother does not take care of the children, she watches TV all day. The teacher suspected that Lydia's mother suffers from some form of mental illness. The house was untidy and dirty, as other mothers have reported. When asked in kindergarten, the parents stated that their children are "different". The parents did not attend any parents' evenings. The father was a truck driver and was usually only at home on the weekends.

Anna (4 weeks old):
This is a case that was reported to child protection services by a social worker in substance abuse counseling. Due to her mother's smoking during pregnancy, Anna had been born underweight and with nicotine withdrawal symptoms. After birth, the mother had been very compliant and also asked for support in child rearing, since she had just separated from Anna's father, who was also doing hard drugs. While receiving assistance from child welfare services after birth, Anna's mother had agreed to a tox screen for drugs based on hair analysis. Since going home with the baby, Anna had kept her appointments with case workers and had been very loving with Anna and her older child from a previous relationship. The case workers perceived that Anna was well cared for and had been gaining weight. The apartment was always clean and well-maintained. Anna's eight-yearold brother has been attending school and after-school care regularly. He was wellbehaved and compliant according to his teachers. After the test results of Anna's mother came back, they showed a severe form of mixed substance abuse. The substance abuse counselor, therefore, called child welfare services and asked that both children need to be taken into custody immediately, since the mother's ability to function as a caretaker was immediately in danger due to her substance abuse. Yet, the social workers on site had a very different perception: the mother still seemed functional, loving, and compliant, desperately clinging to the baby. Ultimately the social workers decided to leave Anna with her mother for another day after consulting with their superiors. After gaining some information on the next day (Anna's mother had recently been picked up by the police because she wandered around intoxicated), both children were taken into custody.

Harriette (6 years):
Harriette's parents form a patchwork family that has a long history with social services. Harriette was placed in foster care after birth by her mother since her mother felt overwhelmed. After her mother suspected that Harriette had been mistreated by the foster family she requested her back, asking for support from child protection services. She has raised her daughter ever since in a way that was deemed successful by her case workers. When Harriette was 5, someone from the neighbourhood filed a string of reports that the child was running around unsupervised and seems to be neglected in hygiene. Youth services investigated but found the calls unfounded. The family continues to be monitored by state services, the mother says she has the feeling that "the deck is always stacked in the agency's favor" (Eubanks 2018).
We have described these cases in some detail to illustrate that policies and laws 3 regulating child welfare need to cover a wide variety of circumstances while also raising severe normative conflicts. The cases differ according to age, family constellation, information situation, endangerment, and the possibility of the state to intervene on several levels. In all risk assessment instruments in social work, age is a central criterion, since it gives the main information about how a young person can take care of her well-being: for instance, as a newborn, Anna is unable to care for her very basic needs like nutrition or hygiene. Her welfare is thus in more danger than, say, her 8-year-old brother's. The consideration of how well a young person can take care of her well-being is based on different normative considerations. Mainly they follow objective list accounts of well-being (Griffin, 2000) codified in standards for the assessment of risk and intervention (Kenneth et. al. 2017).
All cases illustrate another thing: the perspective of the children themselves plays only a subordinate role in case reporting. For instance, Harriette or Lydia would be old enough to be asked about their well-being and views on their living situation. Social workers who we interviewed about cases like these also emphasized that they are striving to include children's perspectives as well as the cooperation of their parents. As we shall discuss below, however, the standard model that underlies the analysis of these cases does not leave enough room for children's perspectives.
The cases we have just presented illustrate a severe form of ethical conflict: On the one side, parents have the constitutional right to raise their children according to their own convictions. Depending on the form of liberalism, this right is emphasized very strongly, as the negative right to non-interference by the state, which is usually granted to adults who can determine themselves (Feinberg 1990). Families are interpreted as belonging to the private sphere, which may only be interfered with in exceptional circumstances, i.e., if harm to children is imminent. Children are often taken to have (only) welfare rights, i.e., rights to protection and having their needs met, since they are not viewed as persons who are capable of self-determination (Matthews and Mullin 2020). Hence, the welfare of children, the autonomy of the parents, and the state's obligation to protect welfare rights conflict with each other. As we shall elaborate on below, this model views children mainly as objects of state intervention, but not as subjects of social and political practice.
In summary, all cases raise the fundamental question of which basis state intervention into a child's life or parent's rights can be justified. There is an often emotionally charged public debate around this issue, which, referring to grave forms of child neglect, calls for rapid and firm intervention by the state. This demand, however, often misses the reality, which is more complex. For one, neither the state nor other institutions have the resources to take so many children into custody. Also, taking children into custody or intervening in other severe forms may not be the best solution to protect a child's welfare overall.

3 3 Child Well-Being and Risk: The Standard Model
We have presented cases from fieldwork to highlight the complexity within which the question of state interference to protect child welfare comes up. In the context that we are investigating, professional social work in child welfare services in Germany, we find a standard model that shapes the legal standards and policies for assessing risk to child welfare and regulating the question of intervention. It is rooted in the normative assumptions of liberal political philosophy, which also influences child welfare institutions and laws in other countries that adhere to political liberal principles, such as many Western European countries or the USA. Even though practices and orientation of intervention vary (e.g., between child-oriented vs. family-orientated), core commitments are quite similar such as respect for parental authority and the privacy of families (Kindler 2008).
An inconsistent approach towards interfering with parents' rights also stems from legal troubles that may arise in applying the liberal model. In recent years, social workers have developed fears of legal repercussions and scandal in the media, if they make mistakes (Biesel 2014). This has, paradoxically, led to either an overly cautious risk assessment or a more rigid way of intervention against the will of families, usually in courts, since child welfare agencies have become more control-oriented (Gilbert et al. 2011;Webb 2006). The number of children taken into custody has risen in the last decade in most Western countries, e.g., slightly in Germany (Statistisches Bundesamt 2022) and more so in Great Britain (Webb 2006). It seems that professionals thus focus more and more on the dualistic question of 'interference-yes, or no?' and less on the question of how to cooperate with families.
We hypothesize that some liberal core contentions, like the public-private distinction, are very influential in shaping these developments. Especially, they shape the legal and public view of the family and parental authority, as has been pointed out by many critics and children's rights advocates. Many of them have argued that classic liberal assumptions create problems in dealing with children and other vulnerable groups, for instance, that the exclusivity of the private, nuclear family in Western countries gives parents too much power over children (Archard 2014;Gheaus 2015bGheaus , 2018Grill 2018).
In the liberal standard model, the main moral conflict arises between parents' rights and claims to protect children's welfare. Child well-being is primarily a private matter unless parents are unwilling or unable to secure children's welfare and cause serious harm. This is in line with the so-called "harm principle" which claims that the state is only warranted to interfere with the freedom of a person if they harm another individual (Feinberg 1990;Mill 2015). Harm to self is not a sufficient reason and would lead to problematic forms of paternalism violating the autonomy of adults. Nevertheless, paternalism plays a role on another level: usually, children are taken to be incompetent to make decisions for their own well-being. Hence, if parents are unable or unwilling to care for the well-being of their children the state acts in loco parentis. Assuming that children are not able to determine their course of life autonomously, the state makes decisions for them. David Archard calls this the "caretaker thesis" (Archard 2014: 52) which is in line with the standard liberal presupposition that children are not rational individuals yet and thus should not be awarded autonomy rights. Adults are taken to have authority over children who do not have the status of free, autonomous individuals. Most liberal philosophers see the latter as a precondition for holding so-called freedom rights (Archard 2018). Hence, state paternalism towards them is usually seen as unproblematic (Mullin 2014).
As a result, the protection of children's welfare by the state can be viewed as subsidiary. The state will only concern itself with children's well-being if parents fail. As we can see from the cases we have introduced, this usually means that a child's well-being needs to be severely endangered. Hence, the state will have to wait until severe risk or harm is caused to children's welfare (Brighouse and Swift 2014;Biesel 2014).
But it is not easy to identify exactly the harm that justifies intervention in parents' rights. No one wants children to suffer or be badly hurt, but apart from obvious and severe cases of bodily injury or sexual abuse, there is considerable space for interpretation. In his liberal legal philosophy, Joel Feinberg has formulated an influential account of harm by defining it as a setback to one's interests. (Feinberg 1990). He distinguishes between "welfare interests", which are the minimal conditions to pursue any plan of life, and "ulterior interests" which are personal projects and goals. In a similar vein, many liberal theorists distinguish between welfare rights and freedom rights that are related to autonomy (Brighouse and Swift 2014). As we have mentioned, the standard model assumes that children, in particular young ones, are taken to have interests (and rights) of the first kind, while plans and personal projects are mainly a matter of adulthood. To answer the question of whether children could have some form of freedom rights since they are on their way to becoming autonomous agents, Feinberg introduces the idea of "rights in trust", i.e., rights that they are not able to exercise yet but which they will have once they reach a certain stage of maturity (Feinberg 2007). Correspondingly, parents and caregivers are obliged to respect these rights and decide accordingly what they think would be in line with them.
The unclear nature of the concept of harm creates problems in assessing cases in a professional context. Defining harm as a "setback" of interests evokes the question of what counts as such. First, not every kind of setback should count as harmful or significantly so. Harm needs to be "serious" or rather "grave" enough to justify intervention from outside (Eubanks 2018). Most child-abuse cases involve some form of neglect or abandonment rather than active violence or abuse. Thus, the question of when the harm caused is "grave enough" becomes even more tricky. Non-physical, emotional abuse is also very hard to diagnose as harm, since it may not show easily, or its effects may turn up much later in a child's life.
Tying harm to interests and, in a more indirect way, to rights, Feinberg, Brighouse, and other liberal theorists base their definition of harm on an objective account of well-being. Objective accounts of well-being rest on theories of what is good for a person and what makes her life go well, often resulting in a list of basic human needs or capabilities (Gutwald 2018). Lists of this kind often comprise what one intuitively deems as necessary for life to go (minimally) well, e.g., nutrition, housing, and freedom of movement. In philosophy and social sciences, these lists are usually based on a theoretical framework like the capability approach (Nussbaum 2007), basic needs theory (Max-Neef 1991), or primary goods (Rawls 1971). Even though the theoretical backgrounds differ, the lists show striking similarities (Alkire 2002).
Lists also play a major role in the risk assessment practices of child welfare services. Many of the tools for screening calls to child protection services contain long and often detailed lists of criteria of what may constitute harm to children. Often it is unclear, however, what the theoretical basis for these lists is. For instance, they mention bodily integrity, emotional well-being, income, shelter, education, etc. Thus, they can be related to the lists that are generated from different theoretical backgrounds, but only vaguely. Mostly, they are based on a mixed approach out of theories of child well-being, theories of social work, and experience. As a result, the lists are often so detailed that they are difficult to go through all the way, especially if time is pressing (Burns et al. 2017;Eubanks 2018). This combination of bulky paperwork and lack of time often results in social workers filling out these forms and risk assessments hastily or even after the fact. They are thus rather useless as a decision-making tool -creating more work on top of it (Biesel 2014).
Hence, the characterization of harm remains problematic: to know what is harmful, we must first know, what objective interests are and what well-being is. Philosophically and ethically, this is not a trivial matter, and it raises the question of whether there is an account that captures well-being in the "pure", theoretical sense that many philosophical theories seem to be after-meaning that well-being can be defined without context.
Even if we could find a suitable theory of objective well-being that captures a child's interests, the question is whether this is broad enough to assess the problems and conflicts that we have identified in the cases described above. Alternative (or supplemental) accounts of well-being point out that actual human well-being cannot be assessed independently of an individual's subjective perspective. Hence, they claim that no one can be well if they do not get their preferences fulfilled or if they do not feel well. Conversely, people may decide to forgo (part of) their own objective welfare interests, e.g., nutrition, and bodily comfort to pursue personal interests like sports or dieting (Gutwald 2018). In addition, families' and children's lives may be influenced by different value systems or cultural traditions, which have a significant impact on how well-being is understood.
In the case of children, however, their subjective perspective is not often considered in the same way as in the case of adults. As we can gather from the cases described above, the children are often not asked, and if they are, e.g., in the case of Harriette, their perspective does not weigh very much. Legally, in some cases children are asked for their views when they are considered old enough, e.g., in custody cases (Haug and Höynck 2017). However, unlike in the case of autonomous adults, a crucial source of determining well-being and interests is absent in the liberal standard view. Judging the well-being of children is thus more dependent on so-called objective list criteria than in the case of adults. Advocates of children's rights and liberation, therefore, look for alternatives to argue for a stronger corroboration of children's perspective, e.g., giving children direct rights (not only in trust) or protecting the specific characteristics of childhood (Archard 2014(Archard , 2018Farson 1974).
Also, it is noteworthy that in all the cases described above, a third party notifies the authorities and describes the situation, often based only on second-hand knowledge. The information that authorities get to hear is thus pre-selected by the perception of the reporters. If the evidence is judged as indicating serious risk, the next steps in the process for social workers will be to investigate further by interviewing the family and visiting their home to get more first-hand information. We can see, however, that deliberate misinformation, as in the case of Harriette, might also cast a long shadow that affects the well-being of the whole family.
Another epistemic question can be raised regarding authority: who will have the opportunity or rather the duty to decide whether to follow up with cases such as those described? Very often, the diagnosis of risk is in the hands of a screener, i.e., of one social worker or teacher who decides whether to take further steps (Biesel 2014;Burns et al. 2017;Eubanks 2018). The leeway in decision-making, the complexity of the decision, and the pressure of responsibility create a difficult and burdensome situation in decision-making. Often, crucial information may be lacking, which would change the premises of decision-making. In the case of Anna, for instance, had the information that her mother had been picked up by the police been available earlier, the premises of decision-making would have changed. A very weighty decision is bottlenecked by dumping it in the laps of one or two social workers, teachers, or caregivers who are often overburdened with work (Bastian 2019).
The issues we have just described are located on the individual or the meso-level of social work. However, structural matters play an important role. For instance, whether Lydia's malnutrition is caused by poverty or neglect cannot be gathered from the case description. Families' financial struggles also involve children's lives and may lead to inadequate nutrition, clothing, or housing. Even in countries like Germany where welfare is readily available, resources for children are scarce and basic. As Eubanks describes it, very often "parenting while poor" is confounded with "poor parenting" (Eubanks 2018: 158). Children who live in poverty are more at risk for neglect, but at the same time, poor parents are more at risk of being screened (Bürger 2010). To give cases like these a broader ethical and philosophical assessment, we suggest extending the liberal standard model by looking for alternatives in shifting the perspective away from intervention to a broader picture.

A Pragmatic Perspective on Child Welfare
Philosophical pragmatism has enjoyed increasing popularity in recent years. It was the work of Richard Rorty, who sparked a new interest in pragmatism (Bernstein 2010a), mainly in the works of the founding figures of this theory, e.g., William James, Jane Addams, John Dewey, or Charles S. Peirce. In the following, however, we do not recur to particular pragmatist philosophers, but to the approach in general (Misak 1999;Putnam 1994;Stuhr 1999;Talisse and Aikin 2011). The potential of pragmatist perspectives lies in questioning long-established dualisms such as those of normative and descriptive, theory and practice, or the individual and the state. Presuppositions of well-known theories such as a strong commitment to individualism or strict separation of private and public in liberalism are thus criticized, and new ways of problem-solving philosophical reflection are tested. We claim that a pragmatist perspective is a good starting point for the issues raised above, in particular, to expose and test the core commitments of the (liberal) standard model, to criticize them, and to establish approaches to child protection that are more practically oriented. We do not aim to present pragmatism as a radical critique or opposition to the standard liberal model. Rather, its added value lies in presenting a richer account of the social and political sphere, which makes it clear that the question of the best interests of the child is not only a legal or moral question but requires a broader social-political interpretation. In the next paragraphs, we shall discuss the potential of pragmatism for the reconstruction and critique of the normative problems we have just outlined.
The first central assumption of pragmatism is its rejection of methodological individualism referring to Hegel's philosophy. Pragmatist philosophers like Dewey focus on social relationality (Dewey 1980) and criticize approaches that conceptualize social dynamics as a sum of actions of atomized individuals who act independently. Instead, relations between human beings are interpreted as central to the world of the individual as well as the social sphere. It is by taking part in social relations as practices through which people develop who they are.
This means, first, that pragmatists strongly object to the liberal individualism that puts the individual in opposition to the state. Rather, they purport that people form dynamic relations from which the political-and the state-emerges. On this basis, alternative, and relational models of caretaking can be developed implying that children have the right to be taken care of by more people than just family members, i.e., by a wider community (Gheaus 2011(Gheaus , 2015a. The state is a specific form of ordering social dynamics and thus nothing more than the relational network that people are a part of. Strictly speaking, intervention is thus not the right word for the issue we are discussing here since there is no (closed) individual sphere that the state or others can interfere with. We are dealing with different forms of relations, e.g., children's relations to adults, to the state, to educational institutions, etc. We should work on reversing the recent trend of shifting child welfare practice to a more interventionist style and strengthen the cooperative role that social workers have always had, namely as a provider of support and assistance.
The pragmatist perspective offers an alternative interpretation of a (democratic) state. In Dewey's approach, for example, all citizens and their political attitudes constitute the democratic state. Strengthening children is therefore not mainly about state intervention. Nor does pragmatism imply a thin understanding of the state. Rather, the question of the democratic state is about diverse social, cultural, and political practices through which all citizens see themselves as potential responders if child welfare is threatened. Of course, these practices also give rise to new conflicts that must be weighed in societal processes of deliberation.
The second conclusion of a pragmatic shift in perspective is that families are part of the relational network of society, casting doubt on whether the liberal private-public distinction and its view on the family should be upheld. Pragmatists interpret families as dynamic social units that are not demarcated from the public sphere. This is even more relevant today when one can no longer assume a clearly defined image of the family. Rather, quite different forms of families have emerged, some of which are changing. This line of argument can also be found in other approaches, which are critical of liberalism, e.g., in post-structuralist or neo-Marxist approaches. Referring to Foucault and Gramsci, authors such as Judith Butler (2004) and Jean-Jacques Ranciére (2010) argue against methodological individualism and a relational interpretation of the social world. These approaches also focus on the vulnerable and precarious forms of life that are often neglected in liberal heuristics of autonomy and agency. Also, several feminists have pointed out that liberalism neglects the claims of vulnerable and marginalized groups in society, and how a lot of the private is also a political matter, e.g., fair distribution of household burdens (Okin 1989). The emphasis on social relationality implies a criticism of the liberal interpretation that the state and the family are separate spheres that may collide. As a political expression of social relationality, the state is neither a counterpart to the individual nor family. Since the state has the task of respecting or ensuring the needs and well-being of all individuals or citizens, interventions to protect children no longer appear as interventions in the strict sense. Rather, the goal of these interactions is to ensure some form of cooperation between all parties involved.
In practice, many social workers already see their role in this way, i.e., being a caregiver that works with families in a voluntary and supportive relationship. However, social workers are strained by the ambivalence of the system, in which they often must alternate between playing good cop/bad cop. Families that have problems are often in the system before removing children from their home. In this phase social workers are caregivers who offer support voluntarily, ensuring compliance and cooperation. If the situation takes a turn for the worse, they have to with roles and become guardians who seek to remove the child from their parents, i.e., cease cooperation and call the courts if parents are unwilling to give up custody. This ambivalent role is problematic when viewed from a pragmatist stance, since these different roles and switches in context are difficult to uphold at the same time, and hinder cooperation. For instance, families who must fear the removal of children are less inclined to seek support from child welfare agencies, to begin with (Biesel 2014;Burns et al. 2017).
Pragmatists advocate for a plural model of the political, much as liberals, but they draw different conclusions from their relational model. In a dynamically changing network of relationships, it is self-evident that new social forms are constantly emerging, which must find their ways to be recognized as such. Pragmatism emphasizes that cultural contexts are crucial factors of the social and as such are to be respected (Bernstein 2010b;Bray 2009). The emphasis on the cultural plurality of family forms and actions does not suggest a rash and universal legitimization of the state's right to impose certain values, e.g., "traditional family values", on families. Of course, the diversity of families, in turn, does not mean that each form would be good for children given their vulnerability.
So, regardless of the form of family, is state intervention or rather state interaction justifiable to protect the child in the pragmatist model? Answering this question requires taking a more differentiated look at the normative foundations of pragmatism. Pragmatism is skeptical of ideal theories of normativity that seek to derive universal principles from theoretical justification. Values emerge from people's experiences (Frega 2017: 21f.). People, as Dewey says, always make diverse experiences and process them differently in social contexts. Experiences that cause suffering, oppress people, discriminate against them, or more generally, that rob others of the opportunity to have their own new experiences, are of particular importance for normative assessments of risk. They hinder the growth of people within social dynamics, which form the core of normativity in pragmatism. The case studies show that the normative conflicts underlying cases of child welfare endangerment are complex but point to ways in which the vulnerability of the children involved can and should be protected. From a pragmatist perspective, it is much more a matter of asking again and again for possible meliorations and non-ideal solutions that support the growth of those affected-in this case, the children whose growth is stunted (we shall elaborate more on the cases below).
Dewey argues that people process experience "experimentally". That is, people form hypotheses about the causes, backgrounds, and consequences of experiences individually and socially. They experimentally adjust their behavior in an open-end process. This also applies to the field of politics: If experiences of vulnerability arise, there is no final political solution to them in the pragmatist sense. Rather, social, and political practice is challenged in constant reflection to adapt its responses to these experiences as, for example, Addams argues in facing the social and normative conflicts of the beginning twentieth century (Addams and Hamilton 2012).
With a pragmatist perspective, a reassessment and new perspective on practice rest on an alternative understanding of people's experiences and vulnerabilities: how and to what extent are people vulnerable, that is, how and to what extent are people deprived of the opportunity for their own new experiences that, as Dewey puts it, foster their own growth. Pragmatism is less concerned with an abstract definition of child welfare. Rather, it focuses on reconstructing vulnerabilities. To what extent are children vulnerable and thus in need of special attention? How can experiences of vulnerability be heard? Again, Addams serves as a good example when she reflects on experience and experimental methods in the context of the vulnerability of women. "As a result, she demonstrates the radical consequences of taking the pluralism, perspectivism, and finite limitations of human understanding seriously." (Seigfried 1999: 221).
This claim also applies to the reconstruction of plural experiences (of vulnerability) of children. It demands an unbiased view of children beyond stereotypical classifications or classical role expectations (Young-Bruehl 2012). The pragmatistic focus on vulnerability, also, does not imply a negative view of children as the liberal view of children as not-yet autonomous implies. Children are not deficient because they have special forms of vulnerability. Rather, experiences should always be interpreted as plural and dialectical. Due to their specific character and contextuality, all people-also children-have their potential for positive experiences as well as limitations and vulnerabilities. In all relations, vulnerability can be a key to making connections. For instance, one needs to make oneself vulnerable in close relations by trusting others-a trust that can potentially be betrayed (Wiesemann 2019). Also, people are often particularly vulnerable when being sick, elderly, pregnant, or in crisis.
The focus on experiences and vulnerability shows another form of differentiation between pragmatism and liberal approaches since it leads to a reconceptualization of autonomy. Vulnerability is often taken to be the opposite of autonomy and thus mainly negative in the view of classic liberal theories described above. However, feminist theorists like Mackenzie et al. (2013) propose a paradigm shift in the concept of autonomy. If autonomy is understood as relational, the opposition between autonomy and social dependence, as well as the vulnerability associated with it, can be resolved. Vulnerability no longer appears as negative and problematic, but only when it is associated with social injustices that lead to problematic forms of vulnerability (ibid.). Like post-structuralist approaches, such as Butler's (2004), vulnerability is understood as a basic human experience that, although different, nevertheless affects all people equally. Applied to children, this means that the vulnerabilities of children are not-as such-worrisome or a matter of institutional concern if children are in relations of care and bonding. However, what MacKenzie et al. call "pathogenic" vulnerabilities are normatively problematic (ibid.; Schweiger 2019).
In connection with the premise of social relationality, it is important to emphasize that there is no hierarchy between different experiences of vulnerability (liberalism seems to imply that there are). Until full citizenship status is achieved at the age of maturity, children are vulnerable in many ways and different ones than adults. Also, they have rather limited opportunities for self-protection within the liberal political system since they are not recognized as full subjects of rights. For this reason, in many liberal democracies, children's rights are not implemented enough. This hierarchy cannot be justified within a pragmatist framework. The question of whether someone is a legally mature subject plays a subordinate role. All people, regardless of their age or origin, are part of the relations of the social. They have positive as well as negative experiences, and the goal of pragmatist reflection is to enable everyone equally to grow, i.e., to develop in the best possible way within this network.
In light of these considerations, the question of the legitimacy of state intervention should be re-conceptualized. Politically, we believe, it is necessary to develop multiple forms of characterizing the vulnerability of children and use them as the basis for decisions on child welfare protection. In this respect, a more inductive approach is required that opens a saturated knowledge of diverse experiences. The potential of a pragmatist theory lies in the involvement of as many people, perspectives, and practices as possible in the interest of finding the best possible solution to a problem-for instance, not looking only into child services or support by social workers, but also involving schools, daycare, or healthcare, depending on the demands and needs of the child. Neither a thin state that keeps out of this field as much as possible nor a focus on state-legal intervention can be justified by this. "Realistic utopia, understood in terms of pragmatism, is not derived from formal rules that demand strict adherence and against which everything else is measured. Instead, it is derived from personal relationships and the cooperation of individuals in solving common problems." (Cochran 2016: 756;translation authors) The protection of children is not only the task of youth welfare offices, social workers, and courts but a task for all citizens in their various fields of practice. There is no individual form of intervention, but rather diverse practices that attempt to react to changing experiences of vulnerability in a learning manner. A static political system is unsuitable to meet these demands.
Epistemic limitations must also be considered. The case studies have shown that knowledge about the situation of children (and their vulnerabilities and injuries) is often very fragmentary. Societies are therefore challenged to increase this knowledge experimentally to make the vulnerabilities better and easier to detect, which means giving children's voices more significance on the political level (Talisse 2007). The question of how to deal with children's vulnerabilities should therefore be broadened well beyond that of the legitimacy of state intervention for the benefit of children. On the one hand, it can be argued from a pragmatist perspective that these interventions/interactions are not problematic at all because the state and the individual are not opposed to each other, and the public is not significantly different from the private. Thus, it follows that the state, which wants to promote the growth of people, can also be more easily active on behalf of children. From a pragmatist point of view, if the distinction between children and adults in political terms is obliterated, children can more easily be allowed to make their vulnerabilities seen and heard.
Finally, pragmatism implies a broad understanding of the political (Festenstein 2013). It thinks less in terms of institutions and rights, as do many contemporary approaches to political philosophy. This does not mean that institutions and rights are insignificant. But it does mean that focusing too much on these dimensions narrows reflection on social problems such as the well-being of children. To be able to pay adequate attention to the well-being of children, it is necessary, in a pragmatist sense, to broaden the fields of action. Not only do we need youth welfare offices that have a careful eye for children's injuries (and how these change in new contexts), but give other institutions like schools, day-care, etc. the resources and leeway to interact with families more and offer them flexible options.
In democratic contexts, it thus is crucial that all citizens learn to what extent children are more vulnerable. This is not (only) about the educational system, but about the multiple places and ways in which adults and children interact with each other. Dewey himself, therefore, calls education the heart of democracy (Dewey 1980). Education is understood as lifelong learning in the sense of an open, reflexive, and emotional processing of experiences. "Education is a means by which people can acquire capacities, but they have to be empowered to use those capacities." (Putnam 2017: 263) Against this background, the diverse educational processes should be much more concerned with children and how to deal with them than is usually the case at present. From a pragmatist perspective, the protection of children does not begin when they are massively endangered, but much earlier.

Implications for Intervention in Social Work: A Broader Development of Practice
We have used our pragmatic view to open a new perspective on the relationship between the best interests of the child, parental autonomy, and state care. We argue that protecting children is less a matter of identifying and justifying normative principles for the legitimation of state intervention and focusing more on improving practice and relations with and for children as a precaution so that the need for coercive intervention does not arise in the first place. Philosophically, there should be less effort into a determination of the well-being of children as a universal or objective idea. Rather, the goal is to improve the practice of dealing with children at risk based on their experiences and the knowledge that professional social workers gather in their field since they provide a valuable source of experiential knowledge. As we have mentioned, social workers are already assuming a supportive and cooperative role in most of their interactions with clients. We suggest that this cooperative stance should be extended to other institutions and contexts in which children are involved. To do this, it is necessary to focus on the children themselves even more than before and make a cooperation with parents and them a priority, thus also creating a space where children have more people that are responsible for them, not only parental caregivers (Gheaus 2018). The vulnerability of children, not the rights of parents or adults should be front and center. The problem with the concept of vulnerability, one may object, is that it may lead to victimization and silencing (Wiesemann 2019). Young children are too often seen only as vulnerable and dependent, as objects for which others make decisions, which is why paternalism is seen as legitimate in their cases (Dworkin 2015;Mullin 2014). The pragmatist framework, we claim, is better able to valorize their experience, since they are not dependent on strict conditions of autonomy and legal competence. The point, then, is to inductively expand knowledge about children's vulnerability as well as their perspective on it.
When looking at social work and child welfare services, it would also be a matter of having time and resources to include the perspective of children more than we have seen in the cases above. Let us take Lydia's case, for instance: a lot of the information in the case is based on hearsay and suspicions of the kindergarten teacher. Lydia was asked about her bruises and gave a clear answer, but apart from that, she and her siblings did not give any more input. The next step would be to send a team of social workers to Lydia's family to inquire further about the family's situation, which usually includes talking to the parents first and interviewing the child if that is possible. Our pragmatist perspective suggests that Lydia is the primary person to talk to and her statements should be taken as a guide in making further decisions. As we have emphasized social workers have not hitherto neglected children's perspectives. Quite to the contrary, most social workers are firm advocates of respecting children's perspectives and cooperating with them. What we argue for is to make a child's perspective, her ways of relating to her family, and her vulnerabilities as they perceive them a focal point in procedures, legal frameworks, and structures within which social services are situated.
Hence, we argue for a political commitment. State intervention should be a subsidiary part of a comprehensive strategy for protecting children, and the focus of policy should be on reversing the recent interventionist trend of removing children from the family. Far too often, political focus (and media attention) is only on those interventions in which there is a massive violation of the interests of the child. However, as the case studies illustrate that child welfare and families can be affected by problems in various ways, and that their situation is socio-political practice should focus more on the diverse contexts, dangers, and resources within the children's environment, which may be activated before removal is at the table as a last resort. This multiplication of social policy practice would be necessary from a pragmatist perspective.
In many countries, for instance, in Germany, family support is available in form of voluntary contractual offers such as assistance in child rearing, support for parents, and educational services. Most social workers make considerable efforts in getting families into services and supporting them without resorting to the ultima ratio of removing a child from their family. However, they are often constrained by a lack of resources, staff, or time (Biesel 2014;Burns et al. 2017). Also, some options, like using educational facilities like school, after-school care, or different forms of living arrangements are sometimes more difficult to negotiate. What is more problematic, however, is that most offers made to children usually need consent from the parents. Hence, if the child wants or even requests help, it is almost impossible to get it if parents withhold it. According to the standard and its legal implications, consent must be overridden by the state which requires considerable risk to child welfare as we have described. The request of a child is only one part of assessing this risk since it is viewed as an indication that the child thinks of herself as unwell-but this is usually not the decisive factor in the assessment. We thus ask for a form of unconditional child welfare service that is offered to kids and young adults directly (Goodin, 1992;Schrödter 2020).
In addition, political action needs to tackle the ambivalence in social workers' roles as we described. If they offer voluntary services and need to obtain consent from parents, they act as partners and counselors of the families. If they decide that the situation has become too serious for a child, they have to switch gears and become enforcers of legal coercion (usually based on decisions made by courts or police). Integration of these two forms of relating to families and professional practice seems to create problematic tensions for social workers, since the balancing act they must carry out may be quite challenging. This practice, thus, needs reconceptualization.
Hence, we are not offering a novel, alternative way to solve the question of whether to intervene or not. Rather we ask for a political and societal reframing of this question, ideally in a way that it does not arise-or at least not arise in isolation of context. It is a task for society as a whole-beyond social work action by the youth welfare offices-which does not only concern state institutions. Legal intervention by the state based on decisions made by these offices in emergencies is only the ultima ratio. It is a matter of a broad social discourse about what is good for the well-being of children in the respective contexts and what exactly their vulnerability consists of. This discourse concerns families and, of course, the broader field of education. Education as the emotional and reflexive processing of experiences of vulnerability is what Dewey posits as the core of democracy. And in this respect, education is often understood far too much as knowledge formation or competence transmission and too little as learning to process experiences. Therefore, we argue for no less than a systematic change in how children and children's well-being is situated within our society, asking for all its members to make it their concern to a greater degree. Children's perspectives, rights and should thus also become a more fundamental matter in legal and political contexts. A troublesome example comes from our own country, Germany. In recent years, there was a political debate on how to implement the "Conventions of the Right of the Child" in the German constitution. This would have meant that children's interests, perspectives, and concerns would have had more weight in many decisions about public life, e.g., building cities, making laws of any kind, and distributing public funds. However, parties could not agree on how strong (or, sadly, weak) to make these rights, which is why the whole effort failed. From our pragmatist perspective, which calls fora broader inclusion not only of rights but of children's perspectives and experiences, this is not acceptable. Children are among the most vulnerable persons, who need good relations. Thus, we, as a society, need to do better.
Funding Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. The research is part of a project on Can Algorithms Calculate Morally in Situations of Conflict? Ethics and digital operationalisation regarding risk assessment in child welfare practice that is funded by the Bavarian Research Institute for Digital Transformation (bidt).

Data Availability
No special data is used.

Code Availability
No software application or code is used.

Conflict of interest The authors have not disclosed any competing interests.
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