A social model for protecting children: changing our thinking?

Abstract

This chapter examines the evolution of the social model for child protection in areas such as disability and mental health. In these domains, there has been a very clear ‘other’ to which the social model was responding — medicine and the notion of biological damage. Similar individualised and pathologised stories are dominating thinking about child protection. It is thus timely to discuss the understanding of the possibilities presented by the notion of a social model for protecting children. The chapter then considers the key interrelated elements of reworking a social model: understanding and tackling root causes; rethinking the role of the state; developing relationship-based practice and co-production; and embedding a dialogic approach to ethics and human rights in policy and practice.