The Munro Review of Child Protection: Interim Report: The Child's Journey, focusing on the child's journey from needing to receiving the right help, was published on 1 February 2011. This follows on from The Munro Review of Child Protection: Part One: A Systems Analysis, published on 1 October 2010, which discussed issues in the child protection system in England and Wales. In recent years child protection systems have tended to focus on imposing and meeting managerial targets and regulations. There is a danger that in doing so we have forgotten the needs of children and the support for families which should be at the core of our thinking and our professional practice.
At this crucial time in child protection social work, the British Journal of Social Work is pleased to make freely available a number of key articles from recent issues of the journal on this important subject. These articles cover topics such as: the development of evidence-based assessment tools seeking to promote standards of good practice and ensure appropriate intervention; debates about the formalization of organizational procedures and their enactment by IT systems; and discussion about the essential role of professional judgment and the types of feedback to practitioners from which they can learn and develop.
There are also articles included in this collection relating to other aspects of social work in family and child care, such as the development of therapeutic interventions with children and families; studies of parenting when there are factors such as substance misuse and mental illness; and issues such as attachment for children received into state care or adopted into new families.