Psychology

Social psychology

Child protection

Welfare system

Public relations

Political science

Medical education

Competence (human resources)

Medicine

Nursing

Welfare

Developmental psychology

Children and Youth Services Review

This article describes the results of a scoping review to better understand child welfare professionals' and service users' (families' and children's) perspectives on and experiences with family engagement in the child protection system. Forty peer-reviewed academic journals from multiple scientific databases published in English between January 1, 2010 and May 31, 2016 were analysed. Aspects of traditional child protection discourse still tends to dominate engagement practices, including the over-riding priority of child protection concerns; authority-based, coercive, and bureaucratized methods of engaging clients; children's participation as perfunctory rather than an important aspect of the process; limited information from the workers to children and families; and processes that are stigmatizing, focusing on families' deficits rather than strengths. To improve the quality of relationships between workers and children/families, and, most importantly, to improve child welfare outcomes, a paradigm shift is n...

Family engagement in the child welfare system: A scoping review