Suchergebnisse

Engendering hope with refugee children is an important role of those working in child protection. This article reports on one part of an evaluation of a community-based child protection project working with Palestinian refugees in southern Lebanon. Validated tools were used to measure levels of hope in 222 children and young people before and after social work intervention. Results were compared to a smaller group of similar children who received no intervention. Children who received social work intervention were shown to have significant improvement in hope. Results highlight the need for early intervention and in some cases intensive contact.

AbstractThe care and protection of children are a concern that crosses ethnic, religious and national boundaries. How communities act on these concerns are informed by cultural and religious understandings of childhood and protection. Islam has specific teachings that relate to the care and guardianship of children and are interpreted in diverse ways across the Muslim world. Islamic teachings on child-care mostly overlap with Western understandings of child protection, but there can be some contested positions. This creates complexities for social workers intervening in Muslim communities where the basis of their intervention is primarily informed by a non-Muslim paradigm or occurs in secular legal contexts. The purpose of this article is to address at a broad level the issue of how overarching concepts of child protection and Islam influence social work practice with Muslim communities. It addresses a gap in practical applications of the synergy of Islamic thinking with core social work practice in the field of child protection. For effective practice, it is argued that social work practitioners need to consider common ground in Islamic thinking on child protection rather than rely on Western frameworks. This requires further research to build evidence-based practice with Muslim families.