This article analyses the links between the nature of child protection referrals and subsequent disposal, showing how mothers and fathers are subjected to markedly different investigative and intervention ap proaches. The bureaucratic mechanisms of child protection systems are examined to show how procedures impact on the social work process. Data obtained during the author's recent experience of child protection investigation referrals as a social worker in a small north ern city is used to illustrate the inexorable contraints of the system on social workers.
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