Where Is the Love? Acknowledging Birth Family Ties After Removal

Family relationships are central to our identities and can be an important and evolving source of love and support across the life course. The United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) recognises children’s right to family relationships, particularly to relationships with their parents. The importance of family relationships is also enshrined in child protection legislation in many countries of the Global North. Indeed, in Norway, the Child Welfare Act now includes reference to the State’s responsibility to support children’s right to love. Despite this, families involved with child protection systems have had little access to support to maintain family relationships generally, nor to supporting familial love, following removal into out-of-home care by child protection authorities. In this chapter, we address the importance of a systematic approach to recognising and supporting emotional bonds, particularly familial love between children and their birth parents in circumstances where children are in out-of-home care (OOHC). We then explore how the emotional bonds between children and their birth parents and immediate families are recognised in Norwegian and Australian child welfare systems (CWSs). Finally, we discuss how recognition of the importance of emotional ties between birth parents and children in child protection legislation and policy guidelines can contribute to securing emotional bonds between children and their birth families.