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.

The contamination of trauma. Traumatized minds, broken families and dysfunctional work groups: Organizational and interpersonal dynamics in complex child welfare court proceedings

2021 ◽  
pp. 053331642110150
Author(s):  
Stuart Stevenson
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Work Groups ◽  
Work Group ◽  
Best Interests ◽  
Organizational Dynamics ◽  
Children And Families ◽  
Vulnerable Children ◽  
History Of ◽  
Adults And Children ◽  
Court Proceedings

Professional work groups engaging with traumatized and dysfunctional families are presented with a disproportionate challenge to an already inevitably painful process that can be an obstacle to balanced decision-making in the children’s best interests. Trauma, abuse and neglect can influence the professional culture that condenses around these families. This occurs more often with the most challenging families with a possible history of professional failure resulting in professional conflict, impulsive and poor decision-making due to the occasions that these destructive dynamics have become unmanageable. Serious case reviews into the deaths of children regularly outline professional failures relating to a breakdown in communication within the professional system and essential and potential lifesaving information having been lost or failing to have been acted upon. The ability to understand complex group and organizational dynamics and the ability to manage relationships with traumatized adults and children, as well as within traumatized work groups is, therefore, an essential skill set for professionals working with the most vulnerable children and families. This article explores trauma and its impact on a work group and why this process was disturbed by uncontained anxiety resulting in professional conflict.

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.

Teaching and Learning Decision-Making in Child Welfare and Protection Social Work

2020 ◽  
pp. 281-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian J. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Risk Factors ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Child Welfare ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Cognitive Learning ◽  
Legal Aspects ◽  
Professional Judgment ◽  
Role Clarity ◽  
Learning And Teaching

This chapter begins with reflections on the author’s own “journey into risk and decision-making” during 10 years of practice and 25 years teaching social workers on this topic. Challenges in teaching and learning the knowledge and skills required for professional judgment in child welfare and protection are considered in terms of models of decision-making and models of cognitive learning processes. This is illustrated with aspects of teaching about decision-making on qualifying and post-qualifying social work courses in Northern Ireland, such as relating understandings of professional judgment and decision-making processes to assessment and care planning practice; legal aspects of making reasonable, reasoned decisions; understanding the value of and challenges in using statistical data on risk factors within decision-making; using models of professional judgment to reflect on practice; ensuring role clarity; and developing skills in engaging other professionals in decision processes. The chapter concludes with a discussion of future directions in learning and teaching about professional judgment in child welfare and protection, including (1) the science of decision-making (including use of risk factors), (2) the art of decision-making (including understanding judgment processes using psychosocial rationality concepts), (3) evidencing what works in terms of teaching decision-making, and (4) building a knowledge base to inform teaching.

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 in Acute Care: A practical framework supporting the ‘best interests’ Principle

2006 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 284-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Bailey
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Acute Care ◽  
Best Interests ◽  
Limited Information ◽  
Life Saving ◽  
Pain And Suffering ◽  
Life Sustaining Treatment ◽  
The Individual

The best interests principle is commonly utilized in acute care settings to assist with decision making about life-saving and life-sustaining treatment. This ethical principle demands that the decision maker refers to some conception of quality of life that is relevant to the individual patient. The aim of this article is to describe the factors that are required to be incorporated into an account of quality of life that will provide a morally justifiable basis for making a judgement about the future quality of life, and therefore the best interests, of critically ill patients who are mentally incompetent. This account consists of three major components - pain and suffering, body functioning, and autonomy - and is applicable in situations where very limited information is available to guide decision making. This framework helps to make decisions about the provision of life-saving treatment that are as consistent as possible in all patient situations.

Individual and systemic/structural bias in child welfare decision making: Implications for children and families of color

2013 ◽  
Vol 35 (9) ◽  
pp. 1634-1642 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keva M. Miller ◽  
Katharine Cahn ◽  
Ben Anderson-Nathe ◽  
Angela G. Cause ◽  
Ryan Bender
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Child Welfare ◽  
Children And Families

Child protection, risk assessment and blame ideology

2008 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-24 ◽  
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.

scholarly journals Understanding Child Support in the Pattern of Child Protection based on the Principle of Child Protection

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 92
Author(s):  
M. Nur Syafiuddin ◽  
Rachmad Safa’at ◽  
Prija Djatmika ◽  
Istislam Istislam
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Child Welfare ◽  
Child Protection ◽  
Child Support ◽  
Analytical Techniques ◽  
Children's Rights ◽  
Children’S Rights ◽  
Best Interests ◽  
Legal Research ◽  
Materials Used

Children have human rights (HAM) as those of adults. Unfortunately, discussions regarding children's rights are not as intense as adult rights or women's rights. There are not many parties that discuss and take concrete actions related to the protection of children's rights. In fact, children are a reflection of the future, assets of family, religion, nation and state. This study aims to describe and analyze the meaning of child support in the pattern of child protection in Indonesia based on the best interests of the child. This normative legal research utilized a philosophical and statutory approach. Analytical techniques used to process legal materials were analytical prescriptive methods, hermeneutics (interpretation) of law and ijtihadi. The legal materials used were primary legal materials including laws on child protection and secondary legal materials consisting of all literature and publications relevant to the field of child protection law. The results showed that there are at least two meanings of child support in the pattern of child protection in Indonesia based on the principle of child protection: child support as a guarantee for child welfare and child support as a futuristic value in child protection.

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