Public concern about the capacity of social workers and other professionals to protect children from abuse and death has never been higher. The aim of this research is to deepen understandings of child protection through focusing on social worker's experiences and methods of doing the work. The home is by far the most common place where actual child protection work goes on, yet little is known about how social workers behave on home visits, whether or how they interact with children, interview, examine them; or how they relate to parents. New insights will be produced by using qualitative methods of observing social workers doing home visits, audio-recording the social worker-service user encounters in the home and interviews with social workers after the visits about those experiences. Some comparative data will be gathered on how children are related to in other places, such as schools. The data will provide for the development of theory and effective strategies for negotiating access to the home, how and where to conduct assessments, ensure children are directly engaged with, how to work with parents and intervene to create safety and effect positive change for children.

The research design adopted a mixture of participant observation and one-to-one interviews. In total, 24 social workers took part in the study and were observed and audio-recorded on a total of 87 practice encounters with children and families where there were child protection concerns. 71 of these were on home visits to the family, 9 interviews with children in schools, and 7 office interviews. The social workers were also interviewed on the way to the home visit and afterwards in the car or in the office.