Combatting Child Abuse CHILD WELFARE A series in child welfare practice, policy, and research Duncan Lindsey, General Editor The Welfare of Children Duncan Lindsey The Politics of Child Abuse in America Lela B. Costin, Howard Jacob Karger, and David Stoesz Combatting Child Abuse: International Perspectives and Trends Edited by Neil Gilbert Combatting Child Abuse International Perspectives and Trends Edited by Neil Gilbert New York Oxford OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1997 Oxford University Press Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Bombay Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madras Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi Paris Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 1997 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc., 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Combatting child abuse : international perspectives and trends / edited by Neil Gilbert. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-510009-3 1. Child abuse— Reporting—Cross-cultural studies. 2. Abused children—Services for — Cross-cultural studies. 3. Child abuse- Prevention—Cross-cultural studies. I. Gilbert, Neil, 1940- . HV8079.C46C66 1997 362.7'663-DC20 96-16327 135798642 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper for Harry Specht This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments This book is the result of a comparative investigation of child abuse reporting systems that took shape over three years, an effort sustained by generous assistance from several sources. Once again, I am indebted to the family members who established the Milton and Gertrude Chernin Chair in Social Services and Social Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley, which permitted me the time and resources to plan this project and to begin work on the initial phase. I owe special gratitude to the Conrad Hilton Foundation for providing the support needed to facilitate the research efforts of the interna- tional study team. Toward the end of this project I was fortunate to receive a foundation grant to organize a final meeting with the research team — a lively gathering at which findings were shared as we grappled with some of the philosophical differences that animated the design and functioning of child abuse reporting systems. My thinking on the difficult issues of identifying and treating child abuse has benefited from the works of many scholars in this area, but none more than those of Douglas Besharov and Duncan Lindsey. Rick Barth and Jill Duerr Berrick, along with other colleagues and students at the Family Welfare Research Group, are a constant source of critical insight and good advice. During the last two years of this comparative project, I was privileged to be a participant in the Executive Session on New Paradigms for Child Protective Services conducted at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Led by Frank Hartmann and Mark Moore, we engaged in a series of probing discussions about how to address the crisis of child abuse reporting in the United States, which honed my interests in comparative analysis. Special thanks are owed to Lissa Roos Parker, who kept me organized and helped in the preparation of the manuscript with meticulous care and a win- ning smile. In the last stages of this project, I served as the Acting Dean of the School of Social Welfare and was immensely fortunate to have Jim Steele, the Assistant Dean for Administration, as a stalwart partner to help manage the bureaucratic demands of university life. Finally, over the years much of what I did not understand about social welfare policy was brought to my attention (and frequently rectified) with habitual glee by my dear friend Harry Specht to whose memory this book is dedicated. His wise counsel is sorely missed. Berkeley, California N.G. May 1996 This page intentionally left blank Contents Contributors xi Introduction 3 I. CHILD PROTECTIVE ORIENTATION 1. United States: California's Reporting System 9 Ruth Lawrence-Karski 2. Canada: Trends and Issues in Child Welfare 38 Karen J. Swift 3. England: Child Abuse Reports, Responses, and Reforms 72 David Berridge II. FAMILY SERVICE ORIENTATION - MANDATORY REPORTING 4. Sweden: Towards a Deresidualization of Swedish Child Welfare Policy and Practice? 105 Sven E. Olsson Hort 5. Denmark: Voluntary Placements as a Family Support 125 Vita L. Bering Pruzan 6. Finland: Child Abuse as a Family Problem 143 Tarja Poso III. FAMILY SERVICE ORIENTATION - NONMANDATORY REPORTING 7. Belgium: An Alternative Approach to Child Abuse Reporting and Treatment 167 Catherine Marneffe and Patrick Broos
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