Introduction

Protecting Children: A Social Model was published in 2018. In this chapter we revisit some core arguments and critically interrogate these, in the light of the experience of COVID-19. Our conclusions are sobering as we reflect on what the pandemic revealed about the state, its responses and the deepening of patterns of power, wealth, inequality and exploitation (Davies et al, 2022). However, we also note that many of the core assumptions of the social model have been reinforced by what we have learned about our vulnerabilities and interdependencies during the pandemic, and we argue for the importance of engaging with the array of constituencies who are seeking to build more progressive futures.

Background

The social model of protecting children emerged from, and continues to be nourished by, those carving out spaces for resistance to old and harmful child protection policies and practices. Essentially, it challenged the following highly individualising narrative:

• • The harms children and young people need protecting from are normally located within individual families and are due to acts of omission or commission by parents and/or other adult caretakers, with the assessment of intra-familial risks and strengths core business for professionals.

• • These acts are normally understood through frames that focus on the role of individual choices or psychological and relational dynamics with considerations such as the socio-economic contexts in which families live largely screened out.

• • Developing expert practice methodologies to change behaviours and choices is a key policy objective, particularly since 2010.

• • Developing expert-led procedures, multi-agency work and professional expertise are all key to protecting children from harm.

In the social model we located our challenge to this narrative within wider understandings of how notions of responsibility and causation have shifted over the last decades, thus placing developments within child protection within a broader economic and societal canvas. We noted the shift in discourses from explanations for social problems that refer to history, backgrounds and contexts, to ones which discount these, replacing understanding with moral judgment of individuals and correction of their behaviour: