Abstract
Notify, investigate, assess, and intervene child protection systems (CPS) have proliferated across the Anglophone world. These systems are dominated by social workers engaged in a continuous process of decision-making in relation to risk and harm, based on available evidence. In recent years, unease has deepened about the process and outcomes of child protection practice, particularly the damage associated with the placement of children in out-of-home care. Service recipients are drawn disproportionately from impoverished families and/or Indigenous and minority ethnic communities. Concern over bias and inequality in child protection systems has risen globally. Bias can function at personal, institutional, and societal levels-including differential surveillance of working-class communities; recorded family histories; expected care standards and behaviours; organizational risk-aversion; and the heuristics applied by individual practitioners. This entry will examine recent research relating to the operation of biases and delineate strategies for the development of socially just child protection systems.