A Good Fit? Ireland’s Programme for Prevention, Partnership and Family Support as a Public Health Approach to Child Protection

The focus of this collection is the promise of public health approaches to child protection and welfare systems development and delivery, and this chapter is a case study of what such an approach looks like in practice. It is built on the experience of a programme of action developed in the Republic of Ireland – the Programme for Prevention, Partnership and Family Support (PPFS) – that brings together a constellation of strategies that align well with a public health approach. The chapter comprises accounts of the PPFS Programme, the social and policy context within which it emerged, the main theoretical strands informing it, and its attendant research and evaluation study. The case study is then reimagined as a public health programme, using Scott et al.’s (Trauma, Violence, & Abuse 17:408–419, 2016) framework as a guide, and a number of implications for a public health approach to child protection and welfare elaborated. These include the potential to transform how we respond to children and their families who are in need of support and assistance with greater population-wide awareness and responsibility in this regard. A critical component of this approach is sustainable, interagency, multi-disciplinary practice. Moreover, it presents opportunities to engage with the views and perspectives of children, young people and their families as part of this process.