ABSTRACT
Community approaches to child welfare offer considerable opportunities for a range of innovations and developments which have the potential to shift the balance of power in client-practitioner relationships towards the less powerful part of the partnership. This chapter focuses on power relations in professional interactions between clients and workers, considering the empowerment of children, and identifying the agenda for internationalising social work practice with children and families. Replacing power relations at the client-worker interface is a complex business because power emanates from a number of different sources, each of which contributes to the creation of particular arrangements in the interchanges people have with one another. Children’s upbringing becomes realising their rights as citizens from day one with the assistance of adults they are able to do things for themselves. The empowerment of children becomes an integral part of this broader agenda of handling the transition from childhood to adulthood as a socially negotiated process which includes children as equal partners.
