ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a preliminary framework within which workers and their agencies can begin to formulate an anti-oppressive response to ethnic minority groups in the post-registration arena. It also provides some definitions before moving on to consider the current context of child protection practice with ethnic minorities groups and some important findings from a Department of Health sub-study on child protection work carried out in a multiracial context. The Children Act 1989 sought to recast the balance between family autonomy and state intervention so that there is a ‘simultaneous emphasis on partnership with parents, support to families and strong protection with a minimum reliance on a court order’. The recent battery of Department of Health-endorsed research projects highlighted the tokenism of the current response systems and in particular the different responses to black families. Parents in the study failed to grasp what happens when a child’s name is placed on the register.
