Child Protective Services are Authoritative: The protective agency initiates the service by approaching the parents about a complaint from some element of the community, for example, police, schools, public health nurses, neighbors, or relatives since the protective service is involuntary, the situation which justifies an agency’s “intruding” into family life must strongly suggest that parents are not providing the love or basic care a child needs for healthy growth and development.
Child Protective Services Carry Increased social agency responsibility: since they are directed toward families where there are children-at-risk lasting harm may result for a child who is experiencing physical abuse or neglect. Social workers in the protective agency must act promptly; their decisions about the nature or seriousness of the complaint and the action to be taken must be based on accurate fact-finding. Once protective service has been initiated, the agency can responsibly withdraw only when the level of child care in the home has improved to acceptable levels. The protective agency, then has a high degree of responsibility to the child-at-risk, to the child’s parents, who are usually found to be experiencing great stress, and to the community, which charges the agency to act for it in the provision of child protection.
Child Protective Services Involve Agency Sanction from the Community: Receive reports about instances of unacceptable child care, to investigate them, and if necessary to initiate service to the family even though the parents have not requested help. Since some social agencies have been given a special mandate by the community in relation to child protection, other social agencies usually expect and look to these specified agencies to act. The provision of child protective services is regarded as a fundamental public agency responsibility. The provision of protection is as basic and essential for children as the provision of education, for which government accepts responsibility. Voluntary agencies were pioneers in establishing child protective services, but by 1967, concern about child neglect and abuse has spread throughout the country, and public agencies in all the states have attempted to strengthen and extend their services more effectively.
Child protective services require a crucial balance in the use of the agency’s authority: Child neglect is both a social and a legal problem. The fact that the agency approaches a family about its problems without a request from the family itself denotes some invasion of privacy, however well motivated the services may be. Furthermore, an integral part of the protective agency’s methods is to reserve the right to invoke the authority of the court by filing a petition alleging parental neglect or abuse if the parents do not improve their level of care. The protective agency has the difficult task of maintaining a just and effective balance in its use of authority in relation to the child-at-risk, whose rights and protection depends upon other persons; to parents, whose right to rear their children without outside intervention is being questioned; and to society, which has delegated a responsibility for the protection of children from neglect or abuse.
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