Introduction

Child protection in Australia is framed as a socio-legal enterprise and this has significant implications for the legal and welfare professionals responding to children who need care and protection. Magistrates believed the child protection service needed to concentrate on providing families with support rather than finding fault with parents; the child protection service is required to establish fault to justify intervention. Much of child protection work is grounded in concerns about the very poor parenting of children. Child protection workers believed that the highly proceduralized way in which child protection is conducted and the emphasis on individual rights meant adult rights predominated over the child’s rights. A child-centred approach to child protection requires a greater emphasis on the prevention of child abuse. The study of magistrate decision-making identified the role and approach of the Children’s Court in child protection and the tensions that emerge between legal and welfare responses to child maltreatment.