Abstract
This article considers selected drivers of decision variability in child welfare decision-making and explores current debates in relation to these drivers. Covering the related influences of national orientation, risk and responsibility, inequality and poverty, evidence-based practice, constructions of abuse and its causes, domestic violence and cognitive processes, it discusses the literature in regards to how each of these influences decision variability. It situates these debates in relation to the ethical issue of variability and the equity issues that variability raises. I propose that despite the ecological complexity that drives decision variability, that improving internal (within-country) decision consistency is still a valid goal. It may be that the use of annotated case examples, kind learning systems, and continued commitments to the social justice issues of inequality and individualisation can contribute to this goal.
Highlights
Kriz and Skivenes [47] for example, found that people in different national contexts, namely California, England and Norway, evaluated risk in the same case vignette differently, with Californians evaluating risk the lowest, England and Norway. They found that the child welfare orientation in Norway could be attributed to an increase in perceptions of risk by Norwegian social workers, as the threshold for intervention is much lower when prevention is framed as a family support service provision aimed at preventing out-of-home placement
It can be reasonably concluded that where a social worker is positioned along the radical-normative continuum will drive decision variability in responses to risk in the context of neo-liberal states
They note that in response to a domestic violence case, that responses between the U.S and the U.K. were concerned with risk, and this may be due to the U.K. swinging towards a child protection orientation; in another type of vignette offered, they found much more of an emphasis in the U.K. on a family service or child welfare-type approach
Summary
Decisions made in response to the problems facing families have considerable consequences in child welfare social work The frameworks informing such decisions are essentially frameworks of social meaning and, as such, are highly influenced by the social contexts within which they occur. Decision variability in child welfare social work reflects inherent tensions in the normative versus radical traditions of social work, conflicting methods of risk assessments and perceptions, differing attitudes on child welfare outcomes and epistemological conflicts about the nature of child abuse [3,4] All of these aspects—ecological, ethical, psychological and political—are reflected in decision outcomes that can vary widely in terms of access to services, recommendations for statutory assessment and decisions to remove children and place them in foster care. It covers a range of selected issues impacting variability broadly organized ranging from the macro to the micro: policy orientations, risk, inequality and poverty, evidence-based practice, constructions of abuse and its causes and cognitive processes
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