Article Review
[Enter Student Name]
[Enter University Name]
In this article review, I will summarize the main points of “Lawyers, Advocacy, and Child Protection,” give a key analysis of the author’s main points, and personally apply the article to my own life.
In Tamara Walsh’s and Heather Douglas’ article, “Lawyers, Advocacy, and Child Protection,” they discuss how and why the Australian government continues to work with the complex issues regarding child protection while concentrating a great deal on parents working through the system. (Walsh & Douglas, 2013). The authors discuss the large power imbalances that are prevalent within this system. Specifically, the authors, in section three, goes through great length to discuss the steps of an Australian investigation into claims of potential issues that would necessitate child protection services. Further, the authors uses a series of studies to make many of the main points of the article. The first study examined mothers who had experienced issues with child protection and the second studied was a series of interviews involved 26 lawyers that had experience in child protection laws (Walsh & Douglas, 2013). The authors discuss the trials that parents go through while working with Child Protection services, their feelings of being relatively lost throughout the system, and the difficulty in navigating the system alone without an advocate.
In regards to analysis, one of the major issues found in the research and studies was that a “vast majority of parents are unable to effectively advocate for themselves when interacting with child protection authorities, (Walsh & Douglas, 2013, p. 629).” Further, the authors stated that “parents generally feel completely disempowered when dealing with child protection services (Walsh & Douglas, 2013, p. 630).” This is particularly difficult, especially when the authors have quotations from lawyers that include the following: “I just think that a lot of times Child Safety want to consent to orders because their evidence is crap, really (Walsh & Douglas, 2013, p. 631).” Ultimately, I believe that the author does an effective job in showcasing the immense difficult that is prevalent in successfully navigating the issues surrounding the current political landscape in regards child protection services in Australia.
Personally, this is a difficult subject for me to consider. It is interesting that the authors point out that many of the families that go through dealing with Child Protection services are from lower socio-economic status’ and/or are minorities (Walsh & Douglas, 2013). This makes me wonder whether this is a societal issue or whether it is something that is more of an issue among lower socio-economic statuses. Honestly, I find it hard to believe that child protection services are more needed in lower socio-economic statuses than upper socio-economic statuses and that, perhaps, individuals in upper socio-economic statuses have more resources available to them to assist in covering up those issues. I sincerely believe that everyone should have an advocate when facing the government through some of these issues because I can imagine that they are, indeed, incredibly difficult to navigate alone, as our authors suggested.
In conclusion, this article review concentrated on the article “Lawyers, Advocacy, and Child Protection.” Specifically, I gave a key analysis of the author’s main points, and personally applied the article to my own life, thoughts, and perceptions of the article.
References
Walsh, T. & Douglas, H. (2013). Lawyers, Advocacy, and Child Protection. Melbourne
