'Uncertainty principle' key to child protection

In one, it is welcomed and indeed necessary. In the other, we have come to associate it with poor professional practice unless all system watchers understand how it has been handled, disabled and dispatched.

The "uncertainty principle" is one of the most famous ideas in physics, used to explain a fuzziness in nature and a limit of what can ever be known - it is, in short, a good thing. Quite the opposite then of uncertainty in the child protection system, often termed "risk" (used to mean the same thing but somehow carrying with it a sense that it is quantifiable).

Here, many, including policymakers and the media, still seek certain assurance that we will remove children at the right time from families where they are maltreated; that we will always learn from our mistakes; that we will make the lives of the children in our care or leaving our care universally better; and that we will make the right judgments and decisions about the risk of harm to children in complex family situations.