Preface

This dedicated issue grew out of a symposium entitled Perceptions of safety in child welfare: Contrasting child and adult perspectives at the European Scientific Association on Residential & Family Care for Children and Adolescents (EuSARF) in Porto, Portugal, October-2018. The symposium organizers recognized that a child’s perception of safety and how that perception differs from an adult’s perspective has relevance to professional practice throughout the spectrum of child welfare interventions. Caseworkers assess safety and risk at the time of protective inquiries, removals from parental or foster homes, and placements in residential agencies. Safety assessments persist through a child’s care history to terminations from the child welfare system. Some literature indicates that adults may be guarding against their personal and age-related perceptions of risk and safety, rather than guarding children and youth against the age-appropriate persons, places, and interactions that children perceive (or should perceive) as unsafe. Tim Moore states it is “imperative to understand how children and young people (in care) understand safety, what they believe their safety needs are, and how their understanding influences what they do in situations when they are unsafe” (Moore & McArthur, 2016, p. 1). In some cases, we may be ill-equipping children with little or no teaching and guidance on how to cope with and overcome that fear. The symposium addressed five perspectives from researchers in Australia, Canada, and the United States who have examined children’s perceptions of safety while contrasting their attitudes with those adults who care for them. The implications are critical for children in out-of-home placements but are especially crucial for those children placed in therapeutic residential care since their perception of safety is a requirement for attachment and future developmental relationships. Due to their history of unstable attachment, many youths in out-of-home placements develop maladaptive belief systems for approaching relationships, making them less able to establish and maintain essential bonds with supportive adults. A symposium goal was to build a community of practice from the EUSARF symposium presenters and the audience who have a continued interest in examining children’s safety and its complex perceptual, developmental, situational, ethical, and methodological issues. The co-editors’ wish that this compendium will lead to a community of practice that prompts a vigorous research agenda, as well as practice changes.