The child protection imperative

Awareness of child abuse grew internationally from the mid-1960s. Aotearoa was no exception. Initially focused on the deliberate physical injury of children, child protection has developed to include ever-widening categories of concern (Gilbert, 2012). The visibility of intrafamilial abuse reflects a change of consciousness towards children's rights that can be aligned with the wider post-war human rights discourse, particularly the political ascendancy of women's rights, the so-called ‘second wave of feminism’:

The child protection project is also generally traced to the pioneering research work of the American paediatrician Henry Kempe and associates, specifically, their ‘discovery’ of the battered child syndrome (Scott, 2006). The focus on diagnosis and treatment associated with Kempe's work has arguably set the enduring template for a forensic approach to the investigation and assessment of suspected child abuse:

Professional interest in the cross-disciplinary management of child abuse came to a head in the late 1970s in Aotearoa (Garlick, 2012: 102). This movement clashed with increasingly politicised concerns about the alienating effect of state care for Māori. The resulting friction precipitated a protracted dispute between the claims of social workers to the ‘expert’ role in child protection and the claims of other disciplines, particularly the medical profession.