ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the ways in which specific aspects of the girls’ families impacted on the social workers’ practice, both in terms of the assessment of risk to the girl, and in terms of cooperation, partnership and family participation. The delivery of child protection services in respect of familially sexually abused adolescent girls involved social workers in a complex series of tasks. The assessment of risk tended to be based on a relatively uncritical use of models relating to certain parental and familial characteristics. The research literature suggests that the social workers’ risk assessment in child protection cases tends to rely upon judgements of probability that can be seen to take the form of value judgements and moral judgements in respect of both the girls and their families. Some of the social workers also located the sexual abuse of adolescent girls within a view of certain men that preyed upon vulnerable women.
