Prevention over separation: A critical perspective on child protection practice and policy

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This article critically examines how contemporary child protection systems are shaped by risk-averse practice cultures, structural inequality, cultural dissonance, and uneven investment in family-based preventive interventions. Using an integrative literature review, the article synthesizes empirical studies, policy analyses, programme evaluations, and theoretical scholarship published between 2000 and 2024, with selected foundational works included where they remain conceptually central. Guided by ecological systems theory and critical social work theory, the review argues that child removal is often framed as an individual family failure, while the wider conditions that produce family vulnerability, including poverty, racism, colonial histories, housing insecurity, disability, substance-use-related need, and inadequate service access, are insufficiently addressed. The synthesis shows that poor, Black, Indigenous, and other marginalized families are disproportionately drawn into child protection systems, often through neglect allegations that are closely linked to material hardship. At the same time, evidence from family preservation, home visiting, family group conferencing, and community-based support models indicates that many children can be kept safe when families receive timely, relational, culturally responsive, and adequately resourced assistance. The article, therefore, calls for a shift from surveillance and separation toward prevention, family preservation, and social justice-oriented practice. It concludes that child protection reform requires not only improved practice tools, but also policy, funding, and accountability systems that value family integrity, cultural belonging, and long-term child and family well-being.

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