Child Protection Practice in the Face of Family Violence

Dear Colleagues,

Family violence is a complex and persistent challenge in child protection work worldwide. It often occurs within the private sphere, shaped by unequal power dynamics, emotional dependence, and fear of consequences. For children, such violence may be both concealed and normalized, making it difficult to recognise, articulate, or disclose. For parents, the presence or aftermath of violence may undermine caregiving capacity, erode trust in relationships, and limit their ability to provide consistent and safe care. In many cases, violence continues even after separation, reshaping risk and responsibility in ways that affect both the child’s situation and parental functioning.

In this landscape, child protection services are tasked with assessing concerns, weighing risk, and determining protective responses. These assessments are shaped by legal mandates, institutional frameworks, and professional discretion, but these assessments often take place under conditions of urgency and uncertainty. Practitioners must navigate complex and sometimes competing considerations: the immediacy of risk, the impact on caregiving capacity, the potential for parental change, the dynamics of ongoing or post-separation violence, and the need to account for decisions within institutional and legal procedures. Chosen interventions may reshape family dynamics, affecting trust, relationships, and how protection is perceived by children and parents alike. These conditions may also expose professionals to long-term emotional strain and secondary trauma, raising questions about how child protection services can support sustainable practice in the face of repeated exposure to family violence.

This Special Issue aims to present and disseminate recent empirical and theoretical contributions related to child protection practice in the context of family violence. We invite submissions that explore professional responses, legal and institutional dynamics, decision-making processes, and the lived experiences of children and families. We welcome qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods studies, as well as conceptual and interdisciplinary work that examines how protection is understood, enacted, and negotiated in diverse contexts.

Topics of interest for publication include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Identification and assessment of family violence in child protection;
• Professional discretion and decision-making under uncertainty;
• Emergency child protection measures and the use of temporary interventions;
• Post-separation violence and continuing risk dynamics;
• Parenting capacity and change in the aftermath of violence;
• Children’s voices and participation in protective processes;
• The impact of protective interventions on trust, family relationships, and perceptions of safety;
• Inter-agency collaboration and systemic coordination;
• Institutional logics, ethical dilemmas, and legal frameworks shaping practice;
• Professional well-being, emotional self-care, and resilience in work with family violence.

Dr. Tina Gerdts-Andresen
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Social Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• child protection
• family violence
• professional discretion
• post-separation violence
• vicarious trauma