ילדים בסיכון: בחינת מיתוסים לאור גישה מודעת-הקשר

This article proposes a context-informed perspective to the study of children’s risk and protection. This perspective was developed from our large-scale qualitative research project in Israel that explored perceptions and constructions of child risk and protection among parents and children of various cultures and communities in Israel, and also among the social workers who serve these communities. We present three correlations – racism and exclusion, religion and spirituality, and political conflict and violence – to illustrate our conceptualization. We revisit the ontological nature of the categories of child risk and protection by deconstructing three prevalent myths identified in the risk discourse. We discuss the complexity embedded in risk assessment in a diverse, multi-cultural and multi-context reality, and we elaborate on the discrepancies and differences between parents and professionals, in their values, on the positionality of the observer and on the power relations between them.