Mad,bad or sad?

Abstract

Ideologies associated within the practice of child protection have been previously identified by various writers. This article expands on the previous work by applying the work of Jürgen Habermas. The article explores the manner in which ideology impinges on child protection practice to the extent that it contributes to distorted communication practices that occur at the level of the intersubjective relations between the system (as represented by the various actors in child protection practice) and the lifeworld (as represented by the client). Habermas’s reconstruction of ideology as systematically distorted communication is applied to a hypothetical child protection case to illustrate the manner in which ideology influences everyday child protection practice.