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Professional practice is a defining trait of modernity, and democratic and constitutional nation-states depend on professional practitioners and their efforts to solve problems and coordinate activity in order to distribute state services as accurately as possible, thus dealing with the particular problem at hand. Throughout modern history, legislators in different democratic nation-states have developed complex systems of implementation to make sure that public resources are distributed at the street level according to their democratic intent, and in an accurate manner aimed at solving particular problems. In this manner, state services at the street level are provided according to predetermined political and legal distributive standards set by elected officials through regular law-making and constitutional rights norms. Consequently, professional practice is a central tool in the democratic chain of command in the efforts of legislators to implement democratic policies, and to distribute public goods and burdens. This is also the case with regard to child protection services. Within the system of child protection there are countless practitioners who must abide by the law.

This chapter provides the reader with a legal understanding of children’s right to protection against maltreatment in their homes and the obligations of states parties in implementing this right in practice. The rights and obligations form the framework within which to exercise professional judgment in this area, and specifying their content is a prerequisite for rights to be realized. The focus is on the obligations to prevent and respond to maltreatment as well as on the best interests of the child.

Human rights, and in particular the Convention on the Rights of the Child, have become a standard point of reference for professional practitioners and practices within and across nation-state systems of child protection. The chapter elaborates on how rights challenge professional practice, and how best to answer some of these challenges. It especially focuses on how to understand the child’s right to liberty once adulthood kicks in, and how development must be carefully plotted out to maintain the integrity of the person through to adulthood.

Governments have a range of steering mechanisms and incentives to guide and rein in professional use of discretion. In this study, we examine the contested ‘best interest’ principle. We study child protection legislation, providing information about how governments set a standard for decision-making about the best interests of the child in intrusive interventions. The empirical focus is the formulation of the principle of the child’s best interest as formulated in child protection legislation in 14 countries. The results reveal significant differences between countries with regard to the degree of discretionary power vested in decision-makers, the factors considered and the strength of the principle compared with other principles. The countries’ wording of the best interest principle provides direct information about government views of their responsibilities for children in need of protection and the ways in which decisions about their interests should be made.

While professional practice that respects children’s rights in child protection ultimately depends upon the actions of professionals, this chapter illustrates how the way their role is constructed within an organization helps or hinders them. An example from England illustrates the range of organizational change that has been needed both to allow and also to support rights-based practice.

The chapter focuses on Article 12 of the CRC by examining the messages of experts by experience in child welfare and how their messages influence child welfare policy and practice. The focus is on one particular Finnish group of experts by experience. Although this group has indeed shaped policy and legislation by highlighting children’s rights for participation, its influences on front-line practice are more diffuse. It is not only the inclusion of experts by experience which is required to make a change for the better inclusion of children and their rights for participation but also the overall social and moral conditions in which child welfare takes place.

This chapter examines the rights of young people in out-of-home care. In the context of five articles in CRC, empirical data illuminate how the rights of young people in, respectively, foster care and institutional care are met. As concerns for example participation, do the young persons feel involved in the decision to enter care? Do they feel protected from violence, abuse and neglect where they live? Do the feel seen, heard and acknowledged? And to what extent do they experience a milieu where they are being cared for and loved? In some respects, the findings are discouraging, revealing a seemingly inadequate implementation of the intentions of the CRC, which is probably true for many Western countries. An overall result is that young people being placed in institutional care seem to live under considerably more disadvantaged conditions than young people in foster care.

Safeguarding children’s rights in emergency situations is an obligation that follows from the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), and from the European Convention on Human Rights (1950). The member states have to establish a legal framework, institutions and proceedings that effectively ensure necessary protection of children at risk. Emergency decisions have to be carried out within a short period of time. It follows from the nature of such placements that they do not meet the normal standards of the rule of law. Emergency court decisions can shed light on how fundamental and contradictory interests are being considered and balanced by the courts: the parent’s right to family life and to proportionate measures on the one hand, and the child’s right to protection against serious neglect and abuse on the other. In this chapter, case law from Norwegian district courts will serve as relevant examples for other countries, of how human rights and legal criteria can come into play in professional practice in emergency cases. It will be discussed whether there is something to learn for social workers from the way the courts argue to justify their decisions in these situations.

Our point of departure in this chapter is to ask whether the avowed aim of a preventative approach in child protection, with strategies that set out to avoid the very large moral and economic costs of placement outside the family, is at all well served by the prevailing distribution of child protection assistance to families and children. And how might rights-based, professional child protection work be of help? The chapter starts with a discussion of marginalization as a prevailing empirical characteristic used to describe families in contact with child protection services (CPS). After this, the focus shifts to a discussion of the role implementation of CRC can play, with the right to education (Articles 28, 29) as a concrete focus.

This chapter discusses how important principles of the CRC inform and challenge the practice of professionals engaged in child welfare services’ preventive in-home measures. The discussion centres on the threefold relationship between the child, the parents and the state. We question where to place the threshold for public intervention in family life, and how to realize children’s rights to services when their parents do not give their consent. Further, we discuss reasons for and consequences following the fact that support to children is primarily strived for through targeting parents. Following important principles of the CRC, we problematize three possible consequences; homogenization of parenthood; reduction of complexity and marginalization of children themselves.