Personal Narrative: My Final Placement

My final placement was situated within the Department of Health and Human Services, child protection. I undertook this placement at the Footscray office, which covered the western region of Melbourne. Within child protection there are several areas in which practitioners can work, including intake, investigations and case management. Most of the time on placement was with case management and with two weeks in investigations. The placement has offered me the opportunity to gain a broad knowledge of child protection industry while implementing theory into practice. I have engaged in meaningful work with families, government departments and other community service professionals. I have been exposed to seeing health practitioners work with young …show more content…
In a variety of practice contexts need to be able to promote child wellbeing, assessing the needs of the children first and foremost. Often the human rights of others will need to be neglected with the example of the removal of children, families rarely would choose to have children removed. As a social worker, there is a need to consider child wellbeing and protection within the broader social and political context. Responding and working in partnership with children, young people and families requires an understanding of the inter-related nature of child wellbeing, abuse and neglect with issues such as poverty, domestic violence, drug and alcohol misuse, disability, colonisation and the ongoing impacts of the Stolen Generation, homelessness, education, health and mental health creates complexity.could talk about complexity …show more content…
Prominent approaches I have used in child protection include: the developmental–ecological framework, situational crime prevention models, attachment theory, trauma theory, child development, gender theory, victimology, developmental–psychopathology, responsive regulation, community development, the public health model, and models of therapeutic engagement. These theories and models have helped me to frame my thinking and interpret findings when investigating the nature and prevalence of a problem, its cause, or its consequences.

There have been difficulties of social work in child protection. Child protection risk assessment is often dismissed as too judgmental, too forensic and too intrusive by proponents of strengths and solution-focused practice. I have felt the frontline practitioner who hopes to practice collaboratively caught between strengths-based, support-focused aspirations and the harsh, problem-saturated, forensic reality that they have ultimate responsibility for child