Decision Making In Child Welfare Services

"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 to substantiate a child abuse allegation, whether a child is at risk of significant harm by parents, and 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. Judgments and decisions in child welfare and protection are based to a large extent on the formidable knowledge base on child abuse and neglect created over the years to support this professional task chore. Nevertheless, making decisions in complex and uncertain environments is fraught with many difficulties and shortcomings. There are in fact many indications that decisions in this area are not reliable and there are many errors in judgment that could be avoided, had the decision makers relied on existing knowledge on decision making under uncertainty and followed appropriate procedures. Much needs to be improved on how these decisions are made by individual professionals and child welfare agencies"--

All countries confront the problem of providing for dependent, neglected, and 1 abused children. While the exact form of institutional response will differ in relation to a country's political and economic structure, its culture and its tradition, the same general kinds of child welfare services have been developed 2 everywhere. Literature from the United States, Canada, and several Western European countries reflects a shared concern about children who reside in unplanned, substitute care arrangements and a growing recognition of the importance of 3 making permanent plans for these children. The American response to this problem took shape in the early 1970s when government at the local, state, and 4 federal levels undertook to fund permanency planning projects. Permanency planning projects were charged with developing and testing procedures that would increase the likelihood that children would move out of substitute care arrangements into permanent family homes either through restoration to their biological families, termination of parental rights and subsequent adoption, court appointment of a legal guardian, or planned emancipation for older children. Long-term foster care, if it was a planned outcome supported by the use of written agreements between foster parents and child care agencies, was recognized as an appropriate option for some children. 2 DECISION MAKING IN CHILD WELFARE Permanency planning projects have had a direct effect on the substantive aspects of social work practice in child welfare.

Acknowledgements -- Contributors -- Child welfare removals by the state / complex and controversial decisions / Kenneth Burns, Tarja Poso and Marit Skivenes -- Removals of children in Finland: a mix of voluntary and involuntary decisions / Tarja Poso and Raija Huhtanen -- Norway : child welfare decision-making in cases of removals of children / Marit Skivenes and Karl Harald Søvig -- Placing children in state care in Sweden : decision-making bodies, laypersons and legal framework / Gustav Svensson and Staffan Højer -- Removing children from their families due to child protection in Germany / Monika Haug and Theresia Høynck -- Child removal proceedings in Switzerland / Stefan Schnurr -- Child removal decision-making systems in Ireland : law, policy and practice / Kenneth Burns, Conor O'Mahony, Caroline Shore and Aisling Parkes -- State intervention in family life in England : safeguarding children through care proceedings and adoption / Karen Broadhurst -- How children are removed from home in the United States / Katrin Kriz, Janese Free and Grant Kuehl -- Removals of children by the child welfare system / variations and differences across countries / Kenneth Burns, Tarja Poso and Marit Skivenes -- Index

This title was first published in 2001. Making decisions about the care and protection of children who appear before the courts is complex. Attention must be paid to the best interests of the child, the child’s need for their family, community views on parenting, and concern about welfare intrusion into family life. Magistrates have a unique authority to make, or reject child protection orders - yet the criteria they use to decide a protection order, how they understand the information presented to them in court and the factors that influence their discretion and decision-making have, until now, been little known. Presenting the findings of a study undertaken at Melbourne Children’s Court, this book offers a much-needed investigation of how magistrates actually make child protection decisions. Case examples highlight this decision-making and the book thus offers practical assistance to professionals working with children in the legal process.

Lessons from child protection errors and mistakes in 11 countries in Europe and North America are drawn together in a stimulating study from leading researchers in the field. By comparing and contrasting impacts, responses and responsibilities, it deepens understanding of how child protection systems fail and points to ideas for risk reduction.

The goal of this qualitative study was to examine the lived experience of decision making by child welfare social workers in British Columbia, Canada. The research problem was a gap in research regarding the decision making of expert child welfare social workers in both crisis and non-crisis situations. The phenomenological research design was to allow social workers the opportunity to express their lived experience of decision making. Through personal interviews with eight social workers currently employed by the Ministry of Children and Family Development in British Columbia, who each had more than ten years experience, information was collected about decision making inboth crisis and non-crisis situations. These data from the interviews were analyzed through a modified Stevick-Colaizzi-Keen method that included writing textural and structural descriptions of the participants' interviews and combining these into composite descriptions. From the interviews, the participants revealed that, contrary to literature, they used intuition as a supplement to rational decision-making processes in both crisis and non-crisis situations. Intuition was based on their experience and expertise in the field of social work. This has implications for future research and for social work leadership. The field of social work has been moving towards decision aids and structured decision-making tools in an attempt to standardize social work decision making. The role of intuition based on practice experience needs to be addressed by research on decision making and the practice of child welfare social work.

The contributors to this book provide a comprehensive review of child care policy and practice. They present evaluations and critiques of new or impending legislation and policies, and describe innovative services for children and young people who are deemed to be in need of protection, care or control as a result of abandonment, neglect, ill-treatment, offending or other difficulties. They also examine changes in adoption law, where such issues as placement policies in relation to children from ethnic minorities, intercountry adoption and the trend towards greater openness have become prominent and controversial in recent years.