Is Anti-Oppressive Practice a Myth in Child Protection?

This research is focused on Anti-Oppressive Practice (AOP) within the context of Child Protection. The research focuses on child protection workers and supervisors currently working in child protection and their experiences working from an AOP lens. It explores what AOP looks like from an individual, agency and systemic perspective through the experiences of four frontline workers. This methodology is centred around examining frontline workers’ ability to implement and practice from an AOP lens. The participants contribute to the necessary conversation to understand if child protection workers can truly work within the system from an AOP lens. The themes of the findings include: a) AOP and its implementation; b) AOP training and Understanding “Safe Spaces”; c) “Advocacy” with children and their families; d) microaggressions: “but I’m not racist?”; e) “Leader”ship; f) The Pendulum of Child Protection g) What (or who) is working well; and h) Accountability to AOP: it can’t be voluntary.