Developing critical social work in theory and in practice: child protection and communicative reason

This paper argues that a critical analysis of the ideologies that inform contemporary child care has been missing from the ‘re‐focusing debate’. Such an analysis points up the necessity of reasserting a critical social work position in order to provide a basis for reconstructing practice and engaging with other social actors and their ideologies in an open and creative fashion compatible with Habermas’ aspiration of ‘communicative reason’.