The views of 261 professionals attending 36 initial child protection conferences with parental participation were collected by means of a questionnaire. Overall, the professionals found the involvement of parents beneficial to the consideration of risk and the decision‐making process, with some provisos. The data revealed that most of the negative responses arose from one third of the conferences, and that these conferences shared particular features relating to family profile and certain conference characteristics. The nature of the difficulties is identified and explored, especially with regard to the ambiguities and the uncertainties involved in risk assessments which contributed to the professionals, negative experiences, and which seemed to be heightened by the parents' presenc