Preventing and responding to errors in US child protection

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’.

Dysfunctions in French child protection

The chapter provides an overview of the dysfunctions in the French child protection system which highlights the importance and complexity of the system. It has been built on institutions whose spheres of activity evolve (justice, welfare, healthcare) and on professions that defend their own skills and codes of conduct (social professionals, psychologists, lawyers, doctors etc.). However, it also reflects a series of specific and evolving rules and values: for example, the importance of parents, even where they have been identified as ‘failed’; the rejection of paedophilia; attaching importance to what children say. Cooperation among the different sectors and the coexistence of different standards has given rise to misunderstandings and flaws in the system. Despite all precautions, children continue to lack protection from their parents and to suffer. However, the attention paid to children, their experiences and their views have continuously increased in France and elsewhere in Europe. This has been accompanied by greater sensitivity to tragedies. It is this increased awareness that leads to better identification of the system’s weaknesses and, on the whole, to improving standards, laws and practices to strengthen protection and consider everyone’s rights.

England: attempting to learn from mistakes in an increasingly ‘risk averse’ professional context

Concerns about professional and system errors and mistakes have dominated policy and practice debates and changes in England ever since the problem of child abuse was (re)discovered over forty years ago. The period has been punctuated by a series of high profile scandals usually where a child has died and where professionals have failed to intervene effectively. A major policy response has been the use of public enquiries and, more recently, ‘serious case reviews’ to investigate what has gone wrong with the aim of learning from the experiences to ensure that such a tragedy could be avoided in the future. The chapter considers the question of how far the changes introduced have had the effect of increasing learning and developing a system better able to identify and respond appropriately to the need for protection, or have primarily intensified the culture of blame and failure in which professionals are expected to operate. It suggests that while the changes introduced over the last 40 years have perhaps made for a safer system protecting children the system has become more ‘risk averse’ and reactive rather than being able to develop policies and practices which are able to develop longer term preventative strategies.

Errors and mistakes in child protection: an unspoken issue in Italy?

The issue of errors and mistakes in child protection is very rarely addressed explicitly in Italy There have been few public scandals of unprotected children or situations ‘denounced’ to the media by parents or families who felt to be victims of injustice or abusive practice. Unlike Anglophone countries, the Italian child protection system is not used to have enquiries on fatal cases nor in cases where conflicting interest arises, as divorce cases. Some reasons for this could be found in the ambiguity of the child protection system in itself (swinging from a narrow forensic child protection approach to a family support approach), or in the cultural attitude to keep hidden the recognition of errors. Following this discussion, the chapter presents an overview of existing domestic literature and research. It briefly traces the main elements of the Italian child protection system, with its changes from a paternalistic/specialised approach to a neoliberal and ‘familistic’ asset focusing on its fragmentation, ambiguity and unclear definition of responsibilities. It outlines the places where different discourses on errors and mistakes in child protection appear, (considering the public media, court proceedings and professional reflections, and how they have changed in the time. It describes the strategies adopted to deal (or to prevent) errors, drawing on results from qualitative research on how social workers deal with ‘difficult decisions’ and ethical and considering professional and institutional guidelines.

Discourses, approaches and strategies on errors and mistakes in child protection in Germany

Scandals have been part of child protection history in Germany for more than 100 years and it can be shown that they have been driving forces for legislation and concept development on several occasions. Scientific methods for analysing unexpected and unintended negative case outcomes in child protection have entered the field only recently and several approaches to case analysis have been developed. Due to a strong tradition of counterfactual thinking in penal law and ‘Fallverstehan’ in social work most approaches are not informed by empirical research on child protection outcomes. Proceduralisation and resource expansion have been the main responses to public inquiries on errors and mistakes in child protection in Germany which are still non-mandatory. Currently the role of ‘serious case reviews’ in German child protection policy is open for debate and it is argued they offer only limited and conditional value for creating a better child protection system.

The Finnish approach to errors and mistakes in child protection: trust in practitioners and service users?

The shortcomings of the Finnish child protection system have been vividly highlighted by the reports of historic abuse in residential and foster care and by some fatal tragedies. Nevertheless, very little academic research on errors and mistakes in child protection exists. The chapter thus aims to capture this fragmented and unexpressed field in the Finnish system. In doing so, the chapter presents and analyses the preventative and reactive approaches to errors as defined by child welfare legislation. Examples of preventative approaches are regulations requiring some services and practitioners to be licenced and registered, a rather recent way to regulate practice and its quality. Examples of reactive approaches are the rights given to service-users (parents as well as children) to make complaints about and appeal decisions and the treatment they receive. A new practice is the regulation introduced in 2014 giving social workers the right and duty to report problems they encounter in their practice, a form of request for ‘institutional whistle-blowing’. In addition to the legal guidelines, the chapter will examine the national policy programmes which indirectly address errors. These programmes aim to guarantee that services are ‘rightly timed and tailored’ and that the assessments of children’s needs and risks are ‘correctly’ made. These reactive and preventative approaches may, however, have some unintended consequences which will be empirically highlighted. Consequently, it becomes clear that the Finnish approach is coloured by trust in practitioners and service-users and their skills, competences and good intentions to tackle errors, mistakes and wrongdoings. This reflects the overall rationale of child protection as a form of service provided by public administration. Trust may overrule a critical examination of – and learning from – errors and mistakes. As the very organisation of social and health care services is rapidly changing, the trust-based approach might soon be challenged.

The level-headed approach on errors and mistakes in Dutch child protection: an individual duty or a shared responsibility?

The leading discourse in the Netherlands on errors and mistakes is focused on cases that have resulted in fatal injuries. These have shocked the nation, sparked debate and inspired change. In the Netherlands, the most profound debate resulted from the death of 3-year old Savanna in 2004, the first case where an employee of the child protection agency was prosecuted for manslaughter by negligence. Over the years, the case of Savanna became an iconic part of the discourse on child protection policy, in which the term ‘Savanna-effect’ was used to refer to the shift by child care workers to risk-averse practices for fear of prosecution. Initiatives aimed at improving timely detection of children at risk, such as the reporting code of conduct (‘meldcode’) and the Reference Index for High-Risk Youngsters (‘Verwijsindex Risicojongeren’) were introduced. The discourse turned when critics claimed that the system focused too much on a fear of incidents, causing a disproportional number of children to enter out-of-home placements. This observation inspired the Youth Act 2015, which promotes the restoration and strengthening of the parents’ problem-solving abilities and responsibilities, and aims to reduce regulatory pressures on youth care professionals. This chapter reports on two studies conducted in the new child protection system: an analysis of Dutch reports on major calamities since 2015 and a media analysis of the same period. These studies indicate the current public discourse as well as the underlying problems that were identified by the Youth Care Inspection.

Errors and mistakes in child protection: understandings and responsibilities

This chapter provides an overview and discussion of some key concepts and issues in the book. It discusses different definitions of errors and mistakes and the most common approaches (including the plague approach; the person approach, the legal approach and the systems approach) together with the challenges of trying to avoid errors and mistakes in child protection and deal with them. It demonstrates that there is no universally agreed definition of error and mistakes in child protection and that child protection fatalities are often seen as the result of errors and mistakes. The chapter discusses a central question in child protection which concerns the responsibility for errors and mistakes, how such responsibility is distributed and avoided, and how power relations both reflect and feed into such processes. It argues that these are key characteristics of and challenges for policy and practice in child protection.

Errors and mistakes in child protection: an introduction

This chapter introduces the whole book: it outlines the thinking behind and rationale for the book, the key questions addressed and how the book is organised. It argues that errors and mistakes in child protection are an important issue in different countries across Europe, Scandinavia and North America. They have attracted public interest, media debates and influenced changes in policy and practice. Such developments raise a number of important questions including: What are the impacts of errors and mistakes in child protection? What discourses inform the way errors and mistakes are understood and the way they are responded to? Are certain strategies seen as helpful in reducing errors and mistakes? The book analyses the developments in policy and practice in response to errors and mistakes in child protection in different countries. Chapters cover the historical and political background of discourses on errors and mistakes in different countries and show how errors and mistakes are constructed differently in different political and social contexts with both similar and different impacts. The book demonstrates that what are understood as errors and mistakes have varied both over time and across different jurisdictions. This chapter provides both the framework for the organization of the book and briefly introduces the contents of the different chapters.

Dealing with errors and mistakes in child protection: similarities and differences among countries

The closing chapter summarizes important differences, commonalities, and research gaps identified in the different national perspectives. It discusses the different discourses, approaches and strategies on errors and mistakes in child protection analyzed in the preceding chapters. Specifically, it presents an overview of the different historical and contemporary developments identified in the different countries and attempts to synthesize the similarities and differences, including what might be identified as current and future best practice. In this context, it discusses the strategies which might prove helpful in reducing errors and mistakes and in promoting quality in child protection. It discusses strategies which can aid learning from errors and mistakes and what the key methodological, policy and practice challenges in child protection might be.