It skilfully explains the tightrope that social work professionals walk every day when making decisions about which children at risk of significant harm can - with the right support from a local authority - be looked after safely enough in their own family networks, as opposed to those for whom safe permanence cannot be secured and therefore swift court action to remove them becomes necessary.
What is brave about the paper is the explicit acknowledgement that in our everyday work, we will meet children who may or may not yet have been harmed in their family environments, but for whom removal is neither right nor intended in statute. It forces us to remember that as social workers, we have to carefully judge whether parents and wider family members can act to protect those children from further significant harm if they receive the right support.
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