Contemporary perspectives on child and youth welfare from different European countries

Child and youth welfare systems across Europe reflect a diverse array of legal traditions, institutional structures, and professional practices. While united by the shared commitment to children’s rights and the protection of vulnerable young people, each country faces distinctive challenges shaped by history, politics, and social change. This volume, Contemporary Perspectives on Child and Youth Welfare from Different European Countries, brings together contributions from researchers and practitioners to provide a comparative lens on current debates, shortcomings, and innovations in the field.

The chapters cover eight European contexts: Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Poland and Portugal. Together, they illustrate both the diversity and convergence of welfare practices. This publication brings together comparative insights from these eight European countries to examine how different welfare regimes diagnose, label, and respond to young people with complex support needs. While the national frameworks differ historically, legally and financially, all contributions highlight similar tensions: between care and control, participation and coercion, individual responsibility and structural failure. This publication therefore does not aim to offer a universal definition or intervention model. Instead, it provides a multi-perspective analytical overview of discourses, practices, and challenges, offering a basis for transnational reflection, professional exchange, and policy re-orientation. By presenting these perspectives side by side, the volume not only maps the complexity of European child and youth welfare but also underscores recurring themes: the tension between prevention and reaction, the balance between control and rehabilitation, and the central role of participation and rights in shaping effective systems.

The following chapters were written by experts with situated knowledge of their national contexts. Each contribution discusses the socio-historical background of the child and youth welfare system, the current “Zeitgeist” shaping professional and political debates, the theoretical and methodological foundations of the authors’ analysis, and the implications for future policy and practice. Together, the texts make visible the systemic patterns behind individual biographies — and call for a re-imagining of child and youth welfare that is relational, rights-based, and structurally informed rather than reactive, punitive, or deficitoriented.