Child protection and family group conferencing curriculum for social workers in Palestine

This article describes a United Nations Children’s Fund project to develop a child protection curriculum in social work schools in Palestine conducted over 2016, 2017 and 2018. The curriculum was delivered in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as to a delegation from Palestine in Melbourne. The article discusses the challenges and highlights in introducing a rights and strength-based, child-focused, family-inclusive, and trauma-informed child protection curriculum in the context of occupation, poverty and patriarchy. It emphasises the need for critical reflection for foreign educators in relation to culture, gender, human rights and anti-oppressive practices when teaching in the Middle East and other collective cultures. The key outcomes were new collaborations between Palestinian academics from Gaza and the West Bank, as well as their preference for family group conferencing over traditional Western case management models of child protection to promote peaceful, inclusive societies.