A child's disclosure of sexual abuse can wreak havoc in many lives, especially that of the child's mother. Julia Krane offers a first-hand look into everyday protection practices of child welfare from the perspective of mothers of sexually abused children and their female social workers, charting women's complex, contradictory, and often costly relations with the child welfare arm of the Canadian state. Drawing on interviews with social workers and mothers of sexually abused children, examinations of client files and court documents, and reviews of training and procedural manuals, Krane argues that child welfare procedures designed to protect children and help parents instead end up scrutinizing mothers for their inadequacies, transforming them into a protective labour force expected to safeguard their children. Protection practices, she contends, essentially reproduce legacies of mother blame and responsibility for the child's sexual abuse, relieving the abuser and the state of all liability. In conclusion, Krane uses her analysis to identify areas with potential for change, such as creating practice environments that render explicit the gendered nature of protection, offering support to women in their protective efforts, and allowing opportunities for women to explore and reflect on the context of maternal care and protection. This study lays bare another layer of gender in relation to child sexual abuse, and locates child welfare practice in feminist scholarly debates about women and the welfare state.

Failure-to-protect policies and practices are intended to better ensure the safety and protection of children. But as this book demonstrates, these policies actually increase danger for children -- and for their mothers. While failure to protect is not always encoded in policy documents, practices that engage mothers and hold them responsible for violence in the home, while excusing or ignoring the male offender, are common. Moreover, these actions most often play out on the shoulders of marginalized and already oppressed women and, in a cruel twist, place blame on mothers because they are "unable" to protect their children from factors beyond their control, such as poverty, racism, intimate partner violence and inadequate housing. In this book, writers from Canada, the U.S., the U.K. and Australia explain how the concept of failure to protect emerged and how it differentially impacts child welfare clients by virtue of their gender, race and class positions. Chapters dedicated to child sexual abuse and intimate partner abuse, for example, illustrate just how ineffective failure-to-protect policies are at protecting both women and children. Beyond a critique of child protection systems, the book proposes innovative and effective alternatives to policies and practices informed by failure to protect. This edited collection compels us to think critically about knowledge that is taken for granted and opens up possibilities for practices that are not only grounded in social justice but fulfill the mandate of child welfare to effectively protect children.