Exploring inequities in child welfare and child protection services: explaining the 'inverse intervention law'

Bywaters, Paul, Brady, Geraldine, Sparks, Tim, Bos, Elizabeth, Bunting, Lisa, Daniel, Brigid, Featherstone, Brid, Morris, Kate and Scourfield, Jonathan ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6218-8158 2015. Exploring inequities in child welfare and child protection services: explaining the 'inverse intervention law'. Children and Youth Services Review 57 , pp. 98-105. 10.1016/j.childyouth.2015.07.017

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Abstract

Attempts to record, understand and respond to variations in child welfare and protection reporting, service patterns and outcomes are international, numerous and longstanding. Reframing such variations as an issue of inequity between children and between families opens the way to a new approach to explaining the profound difference in intervention rates between and within countries and administrative districts. Recent accounts of variation have frequently been based on the idea that there is a binary division between bias and risk (or need). Here we propose seeing supply (bias) and demand (risk) factors as two aspects of a single system, both framed, in part, by social structures. A recent finding from a study of intervention rates in England, the ‘inverse intervention law’, is used to illustrate the complex ways in which a range of factors interact to produce intervention rates. In turn, this analysis raises profound moral, policy, practice and research questions about current child welfare and child protection services.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Social Sciences (Includes Criminology and Education)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Child welfare; Child protection; Social inequity; Social policy
Publisher:	Elsevier
ISSN:	0190-7409
Funders:	Nuffield Foundation
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	30 March 2016
Date of Acceptance:	27 July 2015
Last Modified:	18 Nov 2024 04:30
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/76020

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