Full Description
Child Welfare Removals by the State addresses a most important (but little-researched) legal proceeding: when the State intervenes in the private family sphere to remove children at risk to a place of safety, adoption, or in other forms of out-of-home care. It is an intervention into the private family sphere that is intrusive, contested, and a last resort. States' interventions in the family are decided within legal and political orders and traditions that constitute a country's policies, welfare state model, child protection system, and children' s position in a society. However, we lack a cross-country analysis of the different models of decision-making in a European context.
This text aims to present new research at the intersection of social work, law, and social policy concerning child protection proceedings for children in need of alternative care. It explores the role of court-based and voluntary decision-making systems in child protection proceedings, its effects, dynamics, and meanings in seven European countries and the United States, and analyses the tensions and dilemmas between children, parents, and socio-legal professionals.
The book consists of eight country chapters, plus an introduction and conclusion chapters. The range of countries of countries represented in the book covers the social democratic Nordic countries (Finland, Norway, and Sweden), the conservative corporatist regimes (Germany and Switzerland), the neo-liberal (England, Ireland, and the United States), and related child welfare systems.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Contributors
Chapter 1: Child Welfare Removals by the State -- Complex and Controversial Decisions
Kenneth Burns, Tarja Pösö, and Marit Skivenes
Chapter 2: Removals of Children in Finland: A Mix of Voluntary and Involuntary Decisions
Tarja Pösö and Raija Huhtanen
Chapter 3: Norway: Child Welfare Decision-Making in Cases of Removals of Children
Marit Skivenes and Karl Harald Søvig
Chapter 4: Placing Children in State Care in Sweden: Decision-Making Bodies, Laypersons, and Legal Framework
Gustav Svensson and Staffan Höjer
Chapter 5: Removing Children from their Families due to Child Protection in Germany
Monika Haug and Theresia Höynck
Chapter 6: Child Removal Proceedings in Switzerland
Stefan Schnurr
Chapter 7: Child Removal Decision-Making Systems in Ireland: Law, Policy and Practice
Kenneth Burns, Conor O'Mahony, Caroline Shore, and Aisling Parkes
Chapter 8: State Intervention in Family Life in England: Safeguarding Children through Care Proceedings and Adoption
Karen Broadhurst
Chapter 9: How Children are Removed from Home in the United States
Katrin Kriz, Janese Free, and Grant Kuehl
Chapter 10: Removals of Children by the Child Welfare System -- Variations and Differences Across Countries
Kenneth Burns, Tarja Pösö, and Marit Skivenes
Index
