ABSTRACT
The analysis within this work highlights five perspectives that are important to the child welfare system in the United States. These include the idea that little substantive change has taken place in the overall functioning of the child welfare system since its early beginnings. Also, as much as we might like it to be otherwise, the concept of child abuse and neglect in today’s world is a fluid concept, subject to multiple interpretations. The organizations that administer the child welfare programs are largely organized as an assembly line production process. Social work practice in these settings involves an “invisible army” of agency-trained social workers that the social work profession seeks to disavow. Despite the administrative context, child welfare practice as conducted today is essentially practice in a host setting, the legal setting.
