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Gender and child protection work : voices from the front-lines

Child protection work largely relies on mothers in fulfilling its aim to protect children and support families. Mothers are expected to shield children from abuse and neglect regardless of circumstance. Fathers evade such expectations, and are rather treated as unimportant or as aggressors. In either case, they are distanced from the child protection process. These divergent expectations of mothers and fathers often go unnoticed in child protection practice, as social workers are consumed with the urgent need of assessing risk to children. Workers' reliance on mothers becomes a habit that is not easily countered because there is neither the time nor the tools to engage in such a battle. The present study seeks to illuminate gender constructions and their reproduction in front-line child protection work through the voices of social workers. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight former and current front-line workers for this study.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.83158
Date January 2004
CreatorsMorgan, Katherine L.
PublisherMcGill University
Source SetsLibrary and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation
Formatapplication/pdf
CoverageMaster of Social Work (School of Social Work.)
RightsAll items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated.
Relationalephsysno: 002210695, proquestno: AAIMR12776, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest.

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