Decision making in child protection: The role of professional expertise in moderating the relationships between child welfare attitudes and professionals' judgments and decisions

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bilhah Davidson-Arad ◽  
Rami Benbenishty
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Child Welfare ◽  
Child Protection ◽  
Professional Expertise ◽  
Welfare Attitudes

Children’s Participation in Decision Making From Child Welfare Workers’ Perspectives: A Systematic Review

2021 ◽  
pp. 104973152098484 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karmen Toros
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Review ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Child Welfare ◽  
Child Protection ◽  
Child Welfare Workers ◽  
Children’S Participation ◽  
Participation In Decision Making ◽  
Children's Participation ◽  
Meta Analyses ◽  
Welfare Workers

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.

Instrumentation to Understand the Child Protective Services Decision-Making Processes

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.

Preventing and responding to errors in US child protection

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’.

Decision-Making and Judgment in Child Welfare and Protection

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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