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In recent decades child protection knowledge has been informed by advances in neuroscience, epigenetics, and a newer field called the developmental origins of health and disease. This thesis explores how these ‘early prevention sciences’ (EPS) are operationalised in child protection social work policy and practice in Aotearoa during the 2010s. Patricia Hill Collins’ notion of the ‘intellectual activist’ is used to orientate the work toward social justice goals. This thesis is theoretically oriented, centring intersectionality and theories of epistemic power, to enhance understanding of how different knowledges, such as EPS, are (in)validated. I developed the ‘episto-kyriarchy’ concept to explain how different epistemological regimes intersect and (sm)other alternative hermeneutical resources. Four regimes were hypothesised to feature in EPS use (scientism, risk, settler colonialism, and neoliberalism), with likely racist, sexist and classist consequences for Māori and those multiply oppressed. Data included interviews with 24 statutory child protection social workers and policy documents from the 2010s. Intersectionally informed reflexive thematic analysis was used to develop a story, which allowed for a situated reading. Practitioner and policy accounts analysis showed that EPS informs both. Such use creates certain subject positions for children, parents, and social workers. Further, EPS use serves to uphold the hypothesised epistemological regimes. Children are constructed as raw materials, human becomings, to be managed for their potential to add to a future neoliberal economy. Parents are decontexualised and responsibilised, leaving them …