The Implementation Achievement by the Officials in Social Services According to Child Protection Law, 2003 in Thailand

Abstract

The main objective of this research article is to show the law enforcement as one of the most important tools for the officers to protect child and youth. Thus, the officers must have accurate knowledge and understanding about the laws concerned which will help them to select law sections correctly and suitably applied for such a particular case. Moreover, the officers must have virtue in their minds and strictly work with confidence in professional ethics and principles in order to obtain level of implementation achievement regarding the officer’s competencies and to have the best outcome and to be socially accepted as a worker concerned with child and youth protection services. Apart of the importance of the law itself, they are the consciousness and the obligation of the officers which will lead to law implementation regarding each environmental and social context. The research based on both quantitative and qualitative methods aimed to show factors affecting the implementation achievement of officers who perform social services for child & youth protection in Thailand. The important findings were the officers’ opinions in agencies who used Child Protection Law, 2003 concerning the factors of morals & ethics, knowledge & understanding in high ranking. Besides, the factors of morals & ethics had a highest correlation with attitude’s competencies. Also, the level of morals & ethics of the officers had a positive result affecting the level of implementation achievement from high to low respectively (1) attitude’s competencies, (2) behaviors’ competencies, (3) knowledge and understanding competencies. The interesting result of the qualitative method was the basic using of kindness as the best proactive in working with child and youth. However, if the officers used kindness without professional code of ethics or didn’t understand the stage of child development individually, the bad effect might happen in contradictory. Thus, kindness should be used carefully. Nowadays, Child Protection Law, 2003 is still up-to-date and suitable for all aspects of social environments and can be used in helping and protecting child welfare. The problems occurred are not from using the law itself, but from the law enforcement which is still not in progress.