Book Review: Errors and Mistakes in Child Protection: International Discourses, Approaches and Strategies by Kay Biesel, Judith Masson, Nigel Parton and Tarja Poso

Abstract

Errors andMistakes in Child Protection offers a timely comparative analysis of policy and practice developments in relation to child protection errors and mistakes. Further, it contributes to the small number of texts adopting a comparative approach to understanding child protections systems (Burns et al., 2017; Gilbert, 1997; Gilbert et al., 2011). Rich, country-specific detail is offered through individual chapters exploring current and historical developments across England, Ireland, the Netherlands, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, France, Italy and the United States. These are bookended by three chapters that introduce the reader to key concepts and literature in the field and analyse across the case studies to draw overarching conclusions regarding the nature and impact of child protection errors and mistakes. The book will be of practical interest to child protection practitioners and policy makers as well as those with an academic interest in critical social policy debates around the nature of and responses to professional errors and mistakes. Scheduled for paperback publication in September 2021, the book is edited by four internationally renowned academic experts in the field who author the overarching chapters. The first of these chapters charts phases in the construction and control of errors and mistakes from the ‘discovery’ of child abuse in the 1960s. It shows the transformation of the child protection landscape from initial under-reporting and denial of child abuse in the 1960’s to recognition of over-reporting in the 1980’s. Concurrently, the authors demonstrate how initial confidence in professional diagnoses and denial of errors and mistakes ultimately gave way to increasing recognition of instances of misdiagnoses and the potential for unintended and unwanted consequences within systems. Meanwhile, it shows how mistakes and errors were initially constructed as Book Reviews