ABSTRACT
This chapter starts with a description by Kendra Gregson of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Toolkit, now being practiced as an assessment instrument, discovering children at risk in over 40 nations. A child protection system is defined as certain structures, functions and capacities that have been assembled to prevent and respond to abuse, violence, neglect and exploitation of children. The chapter considers this shift in approach to child protection and looks at the use of mapping and assessment tools that can support this paradigm shift. The response to child protection concerns crosses numerous institutions and levels from government ministries through to families. The conventional approach to child protection has been to address each of these areas individually, and to make a linear connection between the specific problem and the specific intervention: to identify what the problem is, identify those children who are at risk, provide some early intervention responses and, if necessary, a full response.
