Child Welfare Services

It is accepted that individual and family problems are reasons underlying emergency child removals.  For instance, a child’s parents may be under the influence of drugs and unable to care for their child in a proper manner. In this sense, emergency removals are always aimed at securing children’s well-being. However, there is also regional variation in the amount of emergency child removals, which can be explained by the socio-economic differences of inhabitants. Some municipalities have more disadvantaged people than others, which has been found to correlate with the need for child protection at the community level. In addition to individual problems and socio-economic risk factors, the child protection system itself may cause the need for child protection. Disadvantaged areas may have available fewer preventive services, which is why child protection has more child removals than in prosperous areas. In this sense, weaknesses in the child protection system itself may cause the need for child removals.

We are focusing on the system of child protection (child welfare) but we have been doing also individual based studies on child maltreatment.

The research group is lead by Professor Timo Toikko