This edition of Shadows & Insight in Practice explores how protective decision-making can unintentionally increase risk of harm. Through the lens of Professional Dangerousness and the concept of Reframing Care and Control, it highlights how decision-making is not only shaped by a commitment to keeping children and young people safe, but also by the understanding of what safety requires.

Beyond the Intention to Protect

Good intentions alone do not protect children. The meaning we assign to protection shapes the decisions they experience.

“What if protective decisions sometimes increase the very harm we are trying to prevent?

Across services working with children, young people and families, there is a shared intention and responsibility to reduce harm, strengthen wellbeing, and create the conditions for children, young people and their families to thrive. Every day, practitioners, teams and organisations make decisions intended to safeguard children and young people from harm.

Yet in complex work, intention alone does not determine the outcome. The very decisions intended to reduce harm can unintentionally increase risk.

When protection does not lead to greater safety, it is rarely because practitioners lack care or commitment. It is often connected to the reality that protective decision-making is an interpretive process, shaped by how risk, harm, safety and responsibility are understood.

Sometimes the greatest influence on protective decision-making is not the information before us, but the meaning we make of it.

What Shapes Protective Decision-Making?

What constitutes a protective response varies, shaping what we notice, what we question, how we understand risk, and the actions we take.

Protection of children and young people emerges across an interconnected ecology of practice, with varying responsibilities, perspectives and understandings of protection. In complex situations, the same information can be understood in different ways, even by professionals who hold the same values about children and young people being protected from harm.

Our understanding of what protection requires is influenced by personal, professional, organisational, systemic and political contexts, as well broader social and cultural factors. Often, unseen psychological and systemic processes shape professional judgement.

Assessment of risk is influenced by how we interpret:

• Ethics and moral reasoning
• Risk and safety
• Harm and wellbeing
• Family dynamics and relationships
• Behaviour and communication
• Responsibility and accountability.

In complex and emotionally demanding environments, decision-making and protective actions can become organised around managing uncertainty, competing priorities and system demands. When this occurs, the lived experience of the child or young person can become less visible, increasing the risk that harm continues or protective needs remain unmet.

The complexity lies not in our shared commitment to protecting children and young people, but in how we understand what actions are needed to increase safety and enhance wellbeing.

Shadows Within Decision-Making

Risk does not increase only because circumstances change for the child, young person or family, but also because of how protective needs are recognised, interpreted and responded to by services.

It can feel uncomfortable to even suggest this…

Risk of harm can increase when professional observations, interpretations and decisions do not adequately recognise or respond to what is happening for the child or young person. This may mean harm towards the child continues, developmental needs are not met, and health and life outcomes are significantly impacted. In some situations, the consequences can be severe and include lifelong disability or loss of life.

Practitioners and services may:

• Become more certain in inherently uncertain situations
• Privilege one explanation while narrowing alternative possibilities
• Focus on one risk factor while ignoring others
• Seek reassurance rather than question emerging concerns
• Align with dominant narratives within teams or systems
• Prioritise confidentiality or professional boundaries in ways that unintentionally limit information sharing about risk
• Make decisions to reduce organisational, relational or emotional discomfort.

These are common and understandable responses in high-complex environments… however, the outcomes for children can be detrimental.

Child Death Reviews

Information is not always absent – the lens through which information is interpreted can shape what becomes visible, what is questioned, and what action is taken.

Child death reviews (across Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom and the United States) illustrate how our decision-making can unintentionally contribute to increased risk and harm. It is common for reviews to show that while child protection concerns are often recognised, the meaning given to the concerns is influenced by assumptions, fragmented information, flawed explanations, or misplaced confidence in how risk was being managed.

A young boy I often think about illustrates how these dynamics can unfold… he experienced more than forty interventions during his four years of life, including postnatal care, health assessments following non-accidental injuries, community nursing support, home visiting, and statutory child protection involvement.

Across every service and intervention, the intention was protection. Multiple professionals recognised concerns and were involved in trying to support his safety and wellbeing. What unfolded; however, is the presence of statutory involvement influenced how responsibility was understood. Concerns were not escalated, with an assumption that risk was being addressed.

Health professionals continued providing care and support while responsibility for escalating risk became located within statutory child protection.

The child’s ongoing experience of risk became less visible.

This is not about who is to blame… when reflecting through a Professional Dangerousness lens we can consider how psychological, relational and systemic factors influenced the way protection was understood and enacted.

Reframing Care and Control

Through Tony Morrison’s work on Professional Dangerousness, he identified Reframing Care and Control as one of the key devices through which service responses can unintentionally contribute to the dangerous dynamics surrounding a child or young person – including within families, professional relationships, organisations, and the wider system.

Professional practice requires practitioners to continually navigate the tension between care and control. Care is expressed through empathy, engagement, relationships and support. Control is expressed through risk assessment, boundary setting, and protective action, including statutory response.

Under conditions of anxiety and emotional demand, care can increasingly become viewed as the safest and most ethical response, while control comes to be experienced as intrusive, harmful, or inconsistent with relationship-based practice.

Protective decision-making can become organised around preserving relationships, avoiding intensive or statutory intervention, or preventing systemic harm. Concerns about abuse, violence or harm may be minimised, rationalised, or explained in ways that reduce the perceived need for protective action – unintentionally reinforcing the dangerous dynamics surrounding the child or young person.

Risks can increase when concerns about intervention itself begin to shape how we interpret the child’s experience, what we recognise as harm, and what we understand protection requires.

Let’s reflect… Are our decisions being guided by the child’s experience, or have concerns about intervention itself begun to influence what we see?

When system avoidance becomes a protective lens

The desire to prevent further harm is at the heart of protective practice. Yet, many practitioners carry experiences of when intervention has not resulted in the safety, support or trauma-informed response children and families needed – I can resonate with this.

The challenge is not recognising that systems can cause harm. The challenge is recognising when concerns about intervention and escalation begin to influence how we interpret, prioritise and respond to the harm or risk of harm a child or young person is experiencing.

This can appear in many ways, for example:

• Hesitating to escalate significant concerns
• Delaying difficult conversations
• Retaining responsibility because other pathways feel uncertain
• Avoiding referrals as previous experiences have reduced confidence in service response.

When concerns about potential harm within systems become the dominant lens, the child’s current experience of harm can become unseen.

Real-World Example: Sophie’s Story

Reframing Care and Control asks us to consider what happens when one aspect of protection becomes dominant in our understanding of what a child or young person needs.

This example illustrates how risk-focused decision-making can unintentionally narrow our understanding of safety, even when everyone involved is acting with the intention of protecting a child.

Sophie was sixteen and pregnant when I first met her. Conversations about whether she could safely parent had already begun.

There were genuine concerns. Sophie was young, experiencing housing instability, and questions had been raised about whether she could safely care for a newborn. Members of the baby’s paternal family believed the baby would be safer in their care and were seeking that outcome.

The reality is that no one wanted this baby to experience harm. Everyone believed they were acting protectively. What differed was not the intention to protect, but how protection was being understood.

The conversations became increasingly organised around risk – Sophie’s age, her circumstances, the uncertainty ahead, and the possibility that she might not cope. The focus became increasingly organised around what might happen, rather than remaining equally open to the evidence of what was happening.

These concerns required careful assessment. Protective decision-making also required consideration of the evidence available. Sophie had not harmed her baby, and she was demonstrating commitment to providing nurturance and care and creating the conditions needed for safety.

Tensions around the baby’s wellbeing and safety existed between the statutory child protection, social work, community and legal contexts. The challenge was holding care and control in tension – ensuring concerns about potential harm informed protective action, while uncertainty and vulnerability did not become the only lens through which Sophie and her parenting capacity were understood.

As Sophie’s social worker, I was part of this ecology of decision-making. I also had to remain aware of how my own understanding of protection was shaping my professional judgement. I knew that unnecessary separation could have lifelong consequences for both Sophie and her baby. My role was not to minimise the concerns but to ensure the assessment remained open to evidence of safety, support and emerging parenting capacity. That included helping Sophie access experienced legal representation so her voice and the available evidence could be fully considered.

Sophie remained the primary caregiver for her baby… her efforts to provide stable, consistent care could not be ignored.

Looking back, Sophie remains one of the strongest reminders to me that protective decision-making is not about choosing between care and control. It is about continually reflecting on what protection requires and ensuring that our understanding of risk remains connected to the child’s experience.

This story could have unfolded differently. Had decision-making become organised only around vulnerability and anticipated risk, Sophie’s emerging protective capacity and the supports contributing to safety may never have been fully recognised.

How is this experienced by the child and young person?

In Sophie’s story, there were two young lives at the centre of the decisions being made.

There was Sophie, a sixteen-year-old preparing to become a mother, and her unborn baby, whose safety, attachment and wellbeing were central to the protective decisions being considered.

For Sophie, this experience was not only about whether she could care for her baby. It was also about how she was seen by others during a significant developmental transition. At sixteen, she was still developing her own identity, confidence and independence while preparing to become a mother.

Being part of conversations about whether her baby should be placed in someone else’s care was deeply traumatic. Sophie loved her baby long before he was even born, and the possibility of being separated from the person she already loved more than anyone else brought overwhelming fear, grief and uncertainty. Rather than simply preparing to become a mother, she was also living with the possibility that she might lose her baby before she had even been given the opportunity to parent.

For her baby, every protective decision carried implications for safety, attachment and relationships. The assessment was never only about managing risk. It was also about whether the baby’s earliest relationship with their mother would be protected, disrupted, or strengthened. Ultimately, remaining safely in Sophie’s care allowed that relationship to develop within the safety, support and accountability that had been built around them.

Holding both realities together required seeing Sophie as both a young person with developmental needs and a mother with emerging protective capacity. It also required recognising that the baby’s safety was inseparable from the quality of the relationships, support and protective assessment surrounding them. Support and protective responsibility were never opposing responses; together, they created the conditions in which safety could be continually assessed and strengthened.

The question was not whether concerns existed. The question was whether those concerns would become the whole story.

Practice Learnings: Holding Protection in Tension

Protective decisions are shaped not only by the risks we recognise, but by what we understand safety requires. Reflection keeps us open to the whole story.

The child death review example and Sophie’s story illustrate two different ways protective decision-making can be shaped by how we understand care, control, and what protection requires.

In the child death review example, concerns about harm were recognised, yet responsibility for responding became fragmented and the child’s ongoing experience of risk became less visible.

In Sophie’s story, concerns about potential harm were also recognised. However, protection required remaining open to more than vulnerability and anticipated risk. It required recognising emerging parenting capacity, relationships, and the supports that were contributing to safety through ongoing assessment.

Together, these examples remind us that protection is not determined by intention alone, but by the meaning we assign to risk, safety, and responsibility. Protective decision-making requires us to remain open to evidence of harm, safety, relationships, capacity, and change. When either care or control becomes the dominant lens, our understanding of what protection requires can become narrowed.

The question is not whether care or control is more important. The question is whether our understanding of protection keeps the child or young person’s safety, wellbeing, and lived experience at the centre of decision-making.

Insight of the Month: The Power of Reframing

Reframing does not change the situation. It changes what we are able to see within it.

Reframing is the practice of considering whether there are other ways to understand a situation, a person’s circumstances, or the meaning we make from what we see.

In trauma-informed practice, reframing can support children, young people and adults to develop new understandings of their experiences and recognise meanings that may have been shaped by fear, shame or self-blame.

In professional decision-making, reframing invites us to look beyond the immediate concern and consider the broader context, including history, relationships, developmental needs, vulnerabilities, strengths and the systems influencing a child or young person’s experience.

Reframing does not mean minimising risk, replacing professional judgement with optimism, or changing the reality of harm. It means expanding our understanding so that risk, need, relationships, context and protective capacity remain visible.

Coming up next

This month, I will be presenting at the Ending Coercive Control and Family Violence Conference on “Unsilencing children and young people who experience family violence: Understanding their language of harm.”

Children and young people experiencing family violence communicate their experiences in many ways. Their behaviour, emotions, relationships, and responses can provide important insights into what they have lived through and what they need from the adults and systems around them.

The presentation will explore the many ways children and young people communicate experiences of harm, safety, and unmet need.

If you would like to read my article on ‘The Hidden Shadows within Practice: How Professional Dangerousness Silences Young People’, you can access it here: (2) The Hidden Shadows within Practice: How Professional Dangerousness Silences Young People | LinkedIn

In Closing…

Professional Dangerousness rarely begins with harmful intent. It emerges when well-intentioned assessment and decision-making become shaped by unseen psychological, relational, organisational, and systemic influences that alter how risk, safety, and responsibility are understood.

The concept of Reframing Care and Control reminds us that the meaning we assign to protection matters. When either care or control becomes dominant in our understanding of safety, decisions intended to protect can unintentionally increase risk.

Concerns about intervention and escalation can become shaped by experiences of systems causing harm, creating a belief that avoiding intervention is inherently more protective. When this understanding becomes dominant, the potential harm of intervention may receive greater attention than the harm the child or young person is currently experiencing.

For children and young people, increased risk can mean harm continues, their experiences remain unseen or unheard, their developmental needs are not met, and their health, wellbeing and life outcomes are impacted.

Protective decision-making returns us to the question that has guided this series: How is this experienced by the child or young person?

Protection is not only about the decisions we make. It is about ensuring we remain centred on the lived experience of children and young people, while recognising the relationships, supports and systems that shape their safety.