Applying a police engagement model to child protection social work: a viable option for British Columbia?

Child welfare services seek to help children, youth, and families following an event of child abuse or neglect, as well as attempt to prevent such events from occurring. However, the research gathered in this study suggests that child welfare intervention is rarely perceived as helpful by the general public. This perception has damaging impacts for the children, youth, and families that the system aims to protect, as well as for the workers offering these services. Another helping profession that has experienced comparable challenges is law enforcement. As such, this major paper explores initiatives previously undertaken by police to help repair their relationship with the community and reviews the outcomes that these efforts have generated. In an effort to unveil pathways of reconciliation between child welfare services and the community, interviews with professionals in the field were conducted to establish if the same initiatives used by police services could be adopted by child welfare services. The results of this study suggest that applying community policing and problem-oriented policing models to child protection social work would be beneficial. Based on the findings of this study, this paper recommends that applying community engagement strategies used by police agencies is a viable option for reform to child welfare services in British Columbia. Furthermore, this paper seeks to contribute to the growing field of research on bridging the gap between social work, law enforcement, and the community.