[Reflections on the legal foundations of working together to safeguard children]. 
The following essay outlines the legal foundations of child protection in Germany.  It can be shown that constitutional law postulates a balance between parents responsibility on the one hand and public assignment to safeguard children on the other hand.  The article focuses on the impact of legislative provisions on practitioners working together to safeguard children.  Discussion of the demands of successful cooperation in the field of child protection shows that the political debate focuses somewhat to much on questions of control.  It is argued that prospective development of child protection law should rather be based on a thorough debate of the demands in the respective professional domains.