Young people benefit from services that foster hope, recognize their strengths, involve them actively in decisions that affect them and create meaningful opportunities for connection and participation. Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

In Quebec and across Canada, people working in child welfare do remarkable work to protect children and youth from maltreatment and to support families facing complex challenges.

But when tragedies occur, such as the recent deaths of children and youth receiving child welfare services in Quebec , public debate tends to turn to accountability, institutional practice and systemic failure .

We need to understand what happened and whether systems worked as they should have. Yet focusing on these questions alone can inadvertently narrow attention to risk, failure and responsibility.…