Decision making in child protection: A comparative international study on child welfare attitudes, maltreatment substantiation, risk assessment, and intervention recommendations

This article explores child welfare workers’ experiences of children’s participation in decision making in the child protection system. The systematic review follows the principles of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses statement and includes 12 peer-reviewed articles published in academic journals from 2009 to 2019. Findings indicate that children’s participation in decision making is generally limited or nonexistent. The age of the child is an important determining factor concerning whether the child is given the opportunity to participate in decision making. Potential harm for children that may result from participation is considered when deciding on whether to include a child in the decision-making process.

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Instrumentation to Understand the Child Protective Services Decision-Making Processes

Decision-Making and Judgment in Child Welfare and Protection ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190059538.003.0004 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 81-108

Author(s):

Alan J. Dettlaff ◽

Dana Hollinshead ◽

Donald J. Baumann ◽

John D. Fluke

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Child Welfare ◽

Child Protection ◽

Well Being ◽

Decision Making Process ◽

Protective Services ◽

Improved Outcomes ◽

Welfare Systems ◽

Decision Making Processes ◽

Child Welfare Outcomes

When children come to the attention of the child welfare system, they become involved in a decision-making process in which decisions are made that have a significant effect on their future and well-being. The decision to remove children from their families is particularly complex, yet surprisingly little is understood about this decision-making process. As a result, instrumentation has been developed and adapted over the past 20 years to further understand variations in child welfare outcomes that are decision-based and, in particular concerning the removal decision, in order to provide a more thorough understanding of the intersecting factors that influence caseworker decisions. This chapter presents research and the development and use of this instrument, drawing from the decision-making ecology as the underlying rationale for obtaining the measures. The instrument was based on the development of decision-making scales used in multiple studies and administered to child protection caseworkers in several states. This effort is part of a larger program of research that seeks to better understand decision-making processes in child welfare systems in order to promote fairness, accuracy, and improved outcomes among children and families.

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Contradictions and Their Consequences: How Competing Policy Mandates Facilitate Use of a Punitive Framework in Domestic Violence–Child Maltreatment Cases

Child Maltreatment ◽

10.1177/1077559520969888 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 107755952096988

Author(s):

Elizabeth Marie Armstrong ◽

Emily Adlin Bosk

Keyword(s):

Risk Assessment ◽

Decision Making ◽

Domestic Violence ◽

Child Welfare ◽

Policy Framework ◽

Child Welfare Workers ◽

Policies And Procedures ◽

Assessment Procedures ◽

Welfare Workers ◽

Related Harm

Research shows child welfare cases involving caregiver domestic violence (DV) continue to produce punitive consequences for non-abusive adult victims. This occurs despite the adoption of a supportive policy framework that emphasizes perpetrator responsibility for DV-related harm to children. Risk assessment procedures have been implicated in punitive outcomes, but we know little about how they shape child welfare workers’ decision-making practice. Focusing on a state with a supportive policy framework, this paper uses grounded theory to examine how policy contradictions, procedural directives around risk assessment, and informal interventions produce punitive consequences for adult victims of DV and unmitigated risk to children. Data include state policy and procedural documents and interviews with child welfare workers describing decision-making in their most recent completed case and most recent case involving DV. Findings point to the need for active alignment of policies and procedures, greater integration of knowledge across practice areas, renewed commitments to differential response, and greater inclusion of DV specialists in child welfare settings.

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Preventing and responding to errors in US child protection

Errors and Mistakes in Child Protection ◽

10.1332/policypress/9781447350705.003.0013 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 235-254

Author(s):

Jill Duerr Berrick ◽

Jaclyn Chambers

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Child Welfare ◽

Child Protection ◽

Predictive Analytics ◽

Assessment Tools ◽

Policy And Practice ◽

Protection Policy ◽

Risk Assessment Tools ◽

The Us ◽

Child Protection Policy

This chapter demonstrates how concerns about avoiding errors and mistakes have been at the centre of child protection policy and practice in the US for many years. In particular the chapter focuses on providing a summary of the state of the art relating to risk assessment tools and predictive analytics as strategies to reduce error in child welfare decision making. It also examines whether our understanding of ‘error’ needs to shift to account for the unknowns. When social workers make decisions based upon fundamental principles, and when they determine that it is in the interests of a child to privilege one principle over another, the result may appear in hindsight as an “error”, but when made as a decision guided by one widely-held principle which was in direct conflict with another. Examining child welfare decision making as a process of selecting and then privileging one principle over another narrows what we might otherwise think of as an ‘error’ and instead recasts some decisions as exceedingly difficult to get ‘right’.

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Multi-agency child protection

Social Work and Social Sciences Review ◽

10.1921/swssr.v16i3.536 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 16 (3) ◽

pp. 37-49

Author(s):

Julia Stroud ◽

Chris Warren-Adamson

Keyword(s):

Risk Assessment ◽

Decision Making ◽

Social Services ◽

Police Officers ◽

Child Protection ◽

Assessment Instruments ◽

Assessment Framework ◽

Recent Developments ◽

Working Together ◽

Actuarial Risk

Public concern over, and recent developments in, the field of child protection are well known (Munro 2012). Within these developments, there has been a strengthening of the role of social work with an increased focus on, and recognition of, professional knowledge, skills and ‘expert’ decision making (Munro 2011; Gilbert et al. 2011). Focus on inter-professional and multi-agency practice has developed alongside (Frost and Lloyd 2006; Frost and Robinson 2007; Ruch 2009), and continues to have a clear focus in the recently issued Working Together to Safeguard Children (H.M. Government 2013).This paper enquires into a relatively under-explored area of multi-agency child protection practice, specifically, that of the police (that is,. non-specialists in child protection) making an urgent, first response to a child protection call, often out of hours and without immediate recourse to the expertise and knowledge of child protection practitioners. In these situations, the police are called upon to make key decisions: for example, whether to immediately protect and remove children using police protection powers (Section 46(1) Children Act 1989), to refer on to local authority social services for a s47 investigation or s17 services, or to take no further action. There is exploration of the issues raised by a request from the police to develop an assessment framework as an aid to practice in these situations. The police had in mind an equivalent instrument to a domestic abuse framework already adopted by them. The paper reviews debates, particularly about predictive efficacy, in the construction of assessment and decision-making tools. The nature and distinction between consensus based and actuarial risk assessment instruments are examined, as are challenges for general multi-agency working, alongside the specific challenges for front line police officers. It is proposed that a consensus based assessment framework to support decision making, drawing on empirically tested, actuarially informed risk assessment evidence, which is collaboratively tested with a multi-agency group, is indicated.

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Child protection, risk assessment and blame ideology

Children Australia ◽

10.1017/s1035077200000079 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 33 (1) ◽

pp. 18-24 ◽

Cited By ~ 16

Author(s):

Philip Gillingham ◽

Leah Bromfield

Keyword(s):

Risk Assessment ◽

Decision Making ◽

Child Maltreatment ◽

Significant Influence ◽

Child Protection ◽

Qualitative Data ◽

Risk Society ◽

Best Interests ◽

The Future

In this article we use qualitative data drawn from a sample of child protection cases to demonstrate how the process of attributing blame to parents and carers for child maltreatment is a significant influence on decisionmaking, sometimes to the detriment of assessing the future safety of children. We focus on two cases which both demonstrate how the process of apportioning blame can lead to decisions which might not be considered to be in the best interests of the children concerned. We conceptualise blame as an ‘ideology’ with its roots in the discourse of the ‘risk society’, perpetuated and sustained by the technology of risk assessment. The concept of blame ideology is offered as an addition to theory which seeks to explain the influences on decision making in child protection practice.

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Decision-Making and Judgment in Child Welfare and Protection

10.1093/oso/9780190059538.001.0001 ◽

2020 ◽

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Child Welfare ◽

Child Protection ◽

Daily Basis ◽

Best Interests ◽

Professional Judgment ◽

Children And Families ◽

Critical Gap ◽

Pain And Suffering ◽

Training And Research

Professionals working in child welfare and child protection are making decisions with crucial implications for children and families on a daily basis. The types of judgements and decisions they make vary and include decisions such as whether a child is at risk of significant harm by parents, whether to remove a child from home or to reunify a child with parents after some time in care. These decisions are intended to help achieve the best interests of the child. Unfortunately, they can sometimes also doom children and families unnecessarily to many years of pain and suffering. Surprisingly, despite the central role of judgments and decision making in professional practice and its deep impact on children and families, child welfare and protection training and research programs have paid little attention to this crucial aspect of practice. Furthermore, although extensive knowledge about professional judgment and decision making has been accumulated in relevant areas, such as medicine, business administration, and economics, little has been done to help transfer and translate this knowledge to the child welfare and protection areas. This book represents our aspiration to fill this critical gap in the child welfare and protection research agenda, while providing an up-to-date resource for practitioners and policy makers. It is our purpose to provide the reader with the ideas, methods and tools to improve their understanding of how context and decision-maker behaviors affect child welfare and protection decision making, and how such knowledge might lead to improvements in decision-making.

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