For decades, child protection systems have striven to provide responsive services to vulnerable children and families in the face of the constant change and instability caused by the bureaucratization of child protection. This book lends a strident voice to the argument for a shift beyond the current risk paradigm, towards genuine cultural change.

Preface Chapter 1: Concerns about Risk as a Major Driver of Professional Practice (Nigel Parton) Chapter 2: The risk paradigm and the media in child protection (Liz Beddoe and Viviene Cree) Chapter 3: Anticipating risk: Predictive risk modeling as a signal of adversity (Irene de Haan and Marie Connolly) Chapter 4: New knowledge in child protection: Neuroscience and its impacts (Clare Huntingdon) Chapter 5: Disproportionality and risk decision-making in child protection (Ilan Katz and Marie Connolly) Chapter 6: Service users as receivers of risk-dominated practice (Helen Buckley) Chapter 7: Engaging Families and Managing Risk in Practice (Kate Morris and Gale Burford) Chapter 8: Assessment and Decision Making to Improve Outcomes in Child Protection (Aron Shlonsky and Robyn Mildon) Chapter 9: Signs of Safety as Promising Comprehensive Approach for Reorienting CPS Organizations' Work with Children, Families and Their Community Supports (Andrew Turnell, Peter J. Pecora, Yvonne H. Roberts, Mike Caslor, Dan Koziolek) Chapter 10: Shifting the focus: working differently with domestic violence (Cathy Humphreys and Nicky Stanley) Chapter 11: Family risk and responsive regulation (Joan Pennell) Chapter 12: Responding Differently to Neglect – an ecological approach to prevention, assessment and treatment (Justine Harris and Robyn Mildon) Chapter 13: Positive leadership in child protection (Robyn Miller) Chapter 14: Concluding Thoughts: Informal and formal support for vulnerable children and families (Marie Connolly).

A risk paradigm has come to dominate many human services in the Western countries over the last twenty years. This tends towards an increasing ‘logic of precaution’ in both policy and professional practice, with unintended negative consequences for those that use the services, those that work in them and wider society. The aim of this series is to critically engage with this paradigm in order to open up new and creative ways for taking policy and practice forward. Each book in the series will investigate the nature, origins, development and evidence for the increasing dominance of the paradigm in its particular field of practice.