An ‘authoritarian neoliberal’ approach to child welfare and protection?

Abstract

Recent years have seen significant changes in the organisation and focus of children’s services in many advanced ‘western’ societies. While this has varied in different jurisdictions (see for example Gilbert, Parton & Skivenes, 2011), we can identify one set of developments which have become increasingly evident in certain countries and which is perhaps illustrated at its sharpest in England with the emergence of, what I call, an authoritarian neoliberal approach to child welfare and protection (Parton, 2014).