Decision making by the child protection team of a medical center.

Abstract

The study in this article examined the decision-making process of a child protection team (CPT) charged with reporting suspected child abuse in a medical center in Israel. The authors focused on the decision whether to conclude that a child was at imminent risk and whether to refer the case to a child protection officer. The authors analyzed the content of 139 case files of the children examined by the CPT in two consecutive years, recorded the case characteristics, and correlated them with the decision in a series of univariate and multivariate analyses. The findings indicate that the characteristics of the family were stronger predictors of the decision than the characteristics of the child and of the event that brought the child to the hospital. Implications of the findings and future research issues are discussed.