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Despite the popularity of public works programs in developing countries, there is virtually no evidence on the value of the infrastructure they generate. This paper attempts to start filling this gap in the context of the PSNP – a largescale program implemented in Ethiopia since 2005. Under the program, millions of beneficiaries received social transfers conditional on their participation in activities such as land improvements and soil and water conservation measures. We examine the value of these activities using a satellite-based indicator of agricultural productivity and (reweighted) difference-in-differences estimates. Results show that the program is associated with limited changes in agricultural productivity. The upper bound of the main estimate is equivalent to a 3.6 percent increase in agricultural productivity. This contrasts with existing narratives and calls for more research on the productive effects of public works. (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Violence within families and child neglect are strikingly common: 700,000 children are found to be victims of abuse or neglect in the United States each year; over the course of childhood, 6% of children are placed in foster care, and 18% witness intimate partner violence. These children are at much higher risks of homelessness, criminal justice involvement, unemployment, and chronic health conditions compared to their neighbors. This article reviews the state of the economics literature on the causes and consequences of child maltreatment and intimate partner violence and calls for greater research into interventions aimed at improving child well-being.

Despite the development of much positive work by to tackle domestic violence, frustrations are often voiced by social care and other professionals - and echoed in women's and children's experiences - that it can be difficult to ensure and sustain safe outcomes for women and children in circumstances of domestic violence. The article takes as its starting point these frustrations and difficulties, and provides an attempt at understanding some of the systemic problems practitioners may be facing that undermine the effectiveness of their practice. The article explores in particular some of the tensions and contradictions that are evident in professional discourses and practices across work with victims and perpetrators of domestic violence; child protection and safeguarding; and child contact. These three areas of work are especially difficult to bring together into a cohesive and co-ordinated approach because they are effectively on separate 'planets' - with their own separate histories, culture, laws, and populations (sets of professionals). The notion of separate 'planets' can also be understood in light of what Bourdieu (1989) would call the 'habitus' of groups, where the particular structures, orientations and approaches in the work of a professional group may create divides between their own everyday and common place professional assumptions and practices and those of other professional groups. Tackling the 'three planet problem', and dealing more effectively with domestic violence as it impacts on adults and children, requires both a unified approach across the separate 'planet' areas and acknowledgement of the processes of gendering that are situating women as culpable victims. It requires much closer and coherent practices across the three areas of work, with acknowledgement and understanding of professional assumptions and practices of different professional groups.

Protecting children's rights and interests, especially within families, is crucial globally. Effective laws and enforcement are needed to ensure their safety and prevent violence, both offline and online. Kazakhstan's efforts in this regard, including legal protection for motherhood and childhood, are important. All of the above allowed for formulating the general purpose of the study – a comprehensive systematic examination of the protection of the subjective rights and legitimate interests of the child in family legal relations and in surrounding society (using the example of the Republic of Kazakhstan). The results were obtained using the tools of theoretical and methodological research of publications devoted to the problems and issues of observance and protection of children's rights and freedoms at the national and global levels, methods of comparative legal and comparative political research, content analysis of official documents, etc. In the study, key issues regarding the protection of children's rights in Kazakhstan were identified, including violence, neglect, and juvenile delinquency. It highlighted the growing number of appeals for the protection of violated children's rights and emphasized the urgent need for improvement in the child protection system. Promising areas for development include enhancing social services, reducing violence in families and institutions, improving legal protection against sexual harassment, and promoting child-friendly activities in preschool education. The study is of both theoretical interest and practical importance for various stakeholders involved in child welfare and protection. The research has practical value and originality in posing individual questions; it is aimed at examining in-depth the most important problems of maternity, family, and childhood protection in modern Kazakhstan.

This article argues for a systems approach to learning how to improve performance, conceptualising child protection services as complex, adaptive systems. This requires an acceptance of the complexity of the work, the essential role of professional judgement and the need for feedback loops in the system where lower-level workers are not afraid to communicate honestly about their experiences, both good and bad, and senior managers treat their feedback as a valuable source of learning. It is argued that current strategies to manage risk in child protection are, paradoxically, making it harder for professionals to learn how to protect children better. Three factors are identified as combining in such a way that they promote a culture in which professional practice is being excessively controlled and proceduralised: the person-centred approach to investigating child deaths, the blame culture and the performance management system. The way they reduce the opportunities for learning are explored.

I investigate whether a school-based deworming intervention in Kenya had long-term effects on young children. I exploit positive externalities from the program to estimate impacts on younger children who were not directly treated. Ten years after the intervention, I find large cognitive effects—comparable to between 0.5 and 0.8 years of schooling—for children who were less than one year old when their communities received school-based mass deworming treatment. I find no effect on child height or stunting. I also estimate effects among children whose older siblings received treatment directly; in this subpopulation, cognition effects are nearly twice as large.

Child welfare workforce turnover has been well studied, although there is limited understanding of factors related to the timing of departure. This study examines predictors of early job departure among newly hired child welfare workers. Data come from the first two waves of a longitudinal study. The sample for this analysis included 1,257 respondents. Hierarchical logistical regression was used to investigate worker characteristics and organizational influences on early departure. Early leavers, or those who left within the first six months, were 14.8 percent (n = 186) of the sample. Regression results indicated that two worker characteristics—years of previous work experience and major of college degree—predicted early departure. Two measures of organizational influences during the transition from training to casework were significant predictors of early departure: (1) caseload size the first week after training and (2) role ambiguity. These findings suggest that organizational attention to the orientation and socialization of newly hired child welfare professionals are likely to be instrumental to preventing early turnover.

Decision-making tools, particularly risk-assessment tools, have been implemented by governments around the world, perhaps most notably in the field of child protection, though little attention has been paid to how practitioners use them. This article presents the findings from ethnographic research that explored how child protection practitioners in the Department of Child Safety, Queensland, Australia, used four Structured Decision Making tools developed by the Children's Research Centre in Wisconsin in their daily practice in the intake and investigation stages of a case. The findings that the tools were not being used as intended by their designers and, in fact, tended to undermine the development of expertise by child protection workers has profound implications for the future development of technological approaches to child protection and, more broadly, human services practice.

This article provides ethnographic insights into how the welfare dilemma of balancing the moral imperative to meet needs with the financial responsibility of allocating limited resources is understood and handled in social work practice. Particular attention is paid to the everyday interaction of managers and social workers within the context of child protection. The analysis draws on interviews and participant observations conducted in child protection departments in Swedish municipalities as part of three research projects between 2014 and 2023. The results demonstrate that the dilemma is present in everyday negotiations, tensions, and power dynamics within the social services. On the one hand, the costs of child protection are constructed as a burden on the municipal budget through engagements in fundamental organisational structures, routines, and control mechanisms. The cue at the centre of this problem construction is “Don’t waste taxpayers’ money.” Conversely, budget constraints and budget control are framed as obstacles to providing quality child protection, based on the cue, “Don’t let children’s well‐being depend on money.” These are two values with strong societal support, neither of which participants want to be held responsible for neglecting. However, in public discourse, the unconditional worth of the child is given greater weight. This can sometimes lead to budget‐related activities being concealed behind more socially acceptable justifications.