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Can we stop equating foster care with child safety? Removing children doesn’t inherently make them safe — not for the next 20, 30, or 40 years of their lives. We need to ask: are we doing everything possible from day one to keep children connected to their people?

Pene Turnell shares her thoughts on National Sorry Day 2025.

Specialavsnitt på temat Våld I Nära Relation med Pene Turnell från Turnell Consulting, Anita Marijic och Sandra Andersson Sacramento från...

Safety Planning. Starts. Lands. Finishes. In the Middle Column. On a recent workshop in Europe, working on safety planning and the role...

I have been asked a few times recently, “Do we need a Words and Pictures for every case?” My answer... “No” But let me clarify. On every...

In a recent case consult, I was struck by how professionals overlooked the family's strengths, despite rich, behaviourally-specific knowledge being shared. When asked to make a pathway decision, every practitioner focused only on the harm and danger. The middle column—the space for strengths and existing safety—was essentially ignored. If we don’t weigh both sides of the scale, we fail to truly assess safety or honour the family’s capacity for protection.

Read that again: your relationships are only as strong as your capacity to have difficult conversations. If we only maintain connection when things are easy, we’re not building strong relationships — we’re building conditional ones. In child protection, this matters deeply. When professionals avoid hard conversations with families to “preserve the relationship,” they’re avoiding clarity — and clarity is kindness. Difficult conversations are uncomfortable, but necessary. They

Ever been told, “don’t take it personally,” when something is deeply personal? In child protection, this work is human — and when we pretend it’s not, we risk dehumanising the very people we’re meant to support. A child being hurt, a mother being dismissed, a colleague being retraumatised — it is personal. Emotional investment isn’t weakness; it’s connection. Dismissing it with comments like “you’re too involved” or “have better boundaries” only silences compassion. Let’s pau

“We don’t have time” is the global refrain in child protection — but slowing down is essential when everything feels urgent. It’s how we avoid mistakes, stay grounded, and bring clarity to the complexity. Group supervision helps us shift from reaction to intention. Because every moment a child is away from their people matters — and our decisions must reflect that.

When we talk about domestic abuse cases, we often frame mums as the problem while violence by dads is mentioned as an afterthought. This language shapes how we assess risk and plan safety. Describing violence as something that just “happened” hides the person responsible. We need to name the behaviours and who’s using them. Real change happens when we shift our lens, focus on the person causing harm, and stop holding mums solely responsible for the outcomes of someone else’s

Who decides who a child belongs to? Surely it’s who the child feels they belong to. Belonging isn’t about legal orders or adult language—it’s about connection, love, and identity. One sparkly-eyed girl, Lilly, would say she belongs to many—her foster mum, dad, siblings, and those she’s loved along the way. Belonging is fluid, felt, and defined by the child. Let’s make sure their voice—not just systems and adults—guides that sense of belonging.