Child Maltreatment, Child Protection and Child Well-being – Research across Borders

Abstract

This special issue is based on contributions from the conference „Child maltreatment and well-being (CMW) II: challenges across borders, research and practices“ that was held at the Freie Universität Berlin from 21st -22nd March 2019. One result of the conference discussions in Berlin 2019 was that it is productive to interrelate research on child maltreatment and well-being more strongly.

The articles gathered in this issue discuss methodological questions about doing research on child well-being as well as results from research on child maltreatment and on child well-being. What is beneficial about combining these perspectives? An interconnection between both fields results, for example, in a broad understanding and concept of child protection, in which child protection is not narrowed down to protection against endangerment, but understood as an effort to improve living environments for children and families (see e.g. Biesel/Urban-Stahl 2018, Cancian 2013).

However, since the research fields were developed separately, we first outline child maltreatment, child well-being and child protection individually in this introduction and then formulate benefits and challenges in the combination of analytical perspectives on children in different social situations (1). Afterwards we shall give a brief overview of how the articles in this special issue address the three fields (2).