Family and Child Welfare

Family and Child Welfare 3 (3+0)

Lesson 30 : Child Protective Services

The focus of protective services

Protective services are initiated in response to some observed effect upon a child, symptoms which seem to put the child at risk and in need of care or protection. Protective services have become more generally available with recent increasing interest in child abuse and neglect. Public welfare agencies are accepting responsibility for the service as part of their general services to children and provide funds to support such services.

Protective services have some distinctive attributes:

1. The client (child) is generally in voluntary, agency action is initiated by a person other than the client or by a community agency.
2. The agency is obligated to offer the serve to protect the child and to remain is the situation until satisfied that the child is no longer in danger.
3. The agency operates with legal authority delegated by the community and can invoke legal sanctions to protect the child.

The growing acceptance of protective services as primarily a social work function and the development of new resources and innovation such as good neighbor homes, emergency parents, are client organizations such as parents anonymous.