ABSTRACT
In this chapter we examine the collective experiences of, and issues for, service users and a variety of other stakeholders in contemporary Anglophone child protection systems. In some senses, the groups we include here sit uneasily in a chapter together. Service users, professionals, community groups, and other stakeholders are powerfully aware of the different spaces they occupy in the context of twenty-first century child protection systems. Each of these stakeholders may be committed to competing positions on vitally important subjects including ones such as what constitutes adequate care, parent and child rights, the meaning of “the best interests of the child,” family responsibilities and family autonomy, and the role of the state. They may well share some common goals but may believe in very different means for achieving them. The very nature of child protection is that most stakeholders involved in such systems and activities experience considerable pain and distress, stemming from different experiences of, and perspectives on, the complex and difficult events that occur, and from the challenging stressors in the myriad relationships they have to manage. Child protection systems always deal with vulnerable people (children and adults) in highly emotional states in extremely contested human environments.
