This article aims to present a Poverty-Aware Paradigm for Child Protection (PAPCP). The increasing scholarly recognition of the damaging impact of poverty, inequality and the neoliberal politics of ‘risk’ on child protection policy and practice, has highlighted the need for a justice-based and poverty-aware analytical framework for child protection social work. In order to create such a framework, we build upon Krumer-Nevo’s Poverty-Aware Paradigm (PAP)—that was first presented in a previous issue of the British Journal of Social Work—and adapt its paradigmatic premises to the context of child protection social work. By addressing ontological, epistemological and axiological questions underpinning the construction of risk and the practices utilised to deal with it, the article provides a clear, practical and applicable link between critical theories and everyday child protection practice. The PAPCP is presented against the background of the risk-focused paradigm currently dominating the child protection systems in both the authors’ countries—Israel and England.

Objective: Parent peer advocacy, mentoring, and support programs, delivered by parents with lived child protection (CP) experience to parents receiving CP intervention, are increasingly recognized internationally as inclusive practices that promote positive outcomes, but little is known about what shared characteristics exist across these types of programs and what variations may exist in service delivery or impact. This scoping review examines 25 years (1996–2021) of empirical literature on these programs to develop a systematic mapping of existing models and practices as context for program benefits and outcome achievement. Method: Studies were selected using a systematic search process. The final sample comprised 45 publications that addressed research on 24 CP-related parent peer advocacy and support programs. Data analysis explored how programs were studied and conceptualized and examined their impact on parents, professionals, and the CP system. Results: Substantial variation in program settings, target populations, aims, advocate roles, and underlying theoretical frameworks were identified. Across program settings, existing empirical evidence on impact and outcomes also varied, though positive impacts and outcomes were evident across most settings. Conclusions: Findings from this review highlight the need to account better for parent peer advocacy and support program variations in future practice development to ensure alignment with inclusive and participatory principles and goals. Future research is also needed to address current knowledge gaps and shed light on the impact of these differences on individual, case, and system outcomes.

The spatial aspects of therapeutic intervention receive marginal attention in the practice and discourse of therapeutic professions. Currently, influenced by the classic Freudian tradition, the central therapeutic space of social workers and psychologists is the agency and the office. Despite the fact that models of home therapy have been developed over the years, its practice has remained marginal in the professional discourse. This article introduces the concept of intervention in a real-life context as a theoretical and practical framework for work with people in poverty that takes place outside the agency. The article is based on a qualitative study that examined the ongoing experiences of nine women who participated in an intervention programme based on the poverty-aware social work paradigm. The findings revealed that intervention in a real-life context takes place in four major realms: the home space, in which meetings were held regularly; the utilisation-of-rights space; the emergency space; and the professional-friendly space. The discussion sheds light on intervention in a real-life context as a means to practise the psychodynamic concept of holding in working with people who live in poverty.

This article, written with parents as co-authors, has two aims: (1) to provide a critical view of the English child protection system based on parents’ views and to locate these views within contemporary child protection studies and (2) to present the transformative value of co-production in the context of child protection studies both as a form of critical scholarship and as a means to influence policy and practice. The current children’s social work system in England does not achieve good outcomes for families, and many children and parents frequently experience it as stigmatizing, inhumane, and harmful. The article presents the experience and recommendations for change produced by parents with a broad range of experience with child protection services in England. The Parents, Families and Allies Network worked with five allied organizations in which parents identified the extensive range of problems that the current system presents and ways forward to achieve more supportive, humane, and inclusive practice with families. Seven main themes emerged: a better definition of need and response to need; partnership, participation, and humane practice; improving legal representation and support in legal proceedings; better support in care proceedings; permanence that maintains links; a better response to domestic violence; and the lack of support for disabled children. The article discusses five features of the project that supported meaningful co-production: taking a political stance, choosing clear and feasible aims, incorporating a range of knowledge, the participation of parents with lived experience throughout all phases of the project, and not settling with just knowledge production.

Critical perspectives and practices are fundamental to social work, yet there are only scarce examples of direct critical practice in public social services, and even fewer empirical evaluations of their outcomes for service users and social workers. This article presents a rapid evidence review of 25 evaluation studies of five programs that operate in the social services departments in Israel according to the principles of the Poverty-Aware Paradigm (PAP). The PAP is a critical paradigm for direct social work practice with people living in poverty that was implemented in the welfare services by the Ministry of Welfare, targeting over 14,000 service users. The evaluation studies we reviewed encompass an overall quantitative sample of 4612 service users and 1363 professionals, and a qualitative sample of 420 service users and 424 professionals. The findings present: (1) the program’s outcomes for service users in terms of relationship with social workers, financial circumstances, family relations, and children’s safety; and (2) the program’s impact on social workers’ attitudes and practices. Finally, we discuss the lessons learned regarding social workers’ role in combatting poverty, the construction of success in interventions with people in poverty, and the article’s limitations.