5.4 - Responding to and working to prevent and treat child exploitation

In this session you have been shown that as society changes new risks to children present themselves and in turn these risks require new ways of working to protect children from abuse and work with children who have been abused.

At the same time children continue to be at greatest risk from those closest to them - their family and friends. Hetherington et al (1997) identify in their exploration of child protection systems in 6 countries a number of positive features of child protection systems:

	A flexible continuum in services designed to prevent, protect and support children, families and communities
	An intermediate space that allows for a grey area of negotiation before entry into the legal road of child protection.

Widening the net of responsibility for protection of children by accessibility, community participation and partnership and creating wider ownership or the protection of children at community level. This may be by joint planning and delivery of services in partnership with voluntary organisations (NGOs) and community groups, by spreading access points to the 'system' or by means such as mandatory reporting in Canada.

As we have seen, however, some of the contemporary issues in child protection concern the removal, invisibility .or dispersal of 'the problem' beyond community or even national boundaries. Thus even whilst someone may be operating at an individual level they need to have an awareness of the wider political and structural context of their work.

We have selected three examples of work to prevent or treat child abuse that tackle the problem from different perspectives. For each we have attempted to show how there is a globalised dimension to the issue and in the response.

Questions of 'how to do it' are in addition addressed in the next Exercise 2 of this session.