Rights-based practice and marginalized children in child protection work

Abstract

Our point of departure in this chapter is to ask whether the avowed aim of a preventative approach in child protection, with strategies that set out to avoid the very large moral and economic costs of placement outside the family, is at all well served by the prevailing distribution of child protection assistance to families and children. And how might rights-based, professional child protection work be of help? The chapter starts with a discussion of marginalization as a prevailing empirical characteristic used to describe families in contact with child protection services (CPS). After this, the focus shifts to a discussion of the role implementation of CRC can play, with the right to education (Articles 28, 29) as a concrete focus.