ABSTRACT
Viewing child welfare as intervention into family life and using the concept of structure, what gives social workers the right to intervene in family life? That is, what is the structure that directs action? Another way to ask this is to ask how authority is grounded in society and in child welfare? What makes such interventions legitimate? So far, we have seen how the concepts of child well-being and child welfare relate to each other within different governing jurisdictions, that is, countries. This has provided us with a broad-ranging view of child welfare. In particular, we have seen how the American system of child welfare is bifurcated with child protection dealing with the “inappropriate” care and treatment of children by parents and caretakers, while social institutions provide institutional protections for children, that is, for their well-being. In the United States, for the most part, child protection is synonymous with child welfare.
