Family Engagement in Child Protection Social Work

Abstract

Family engagement is key to the success of child protection interventions. Families can only benefit from the social work interventions they are committed to being involved with, and a multitude of factors act as barriers to effective family engagement with child protection interventions. Despite the importance of family engagement as a practice value there is a lack of specificity in the field regarding how we build engagement, how we identify when it is present, and how we concretely identify its positive results. This article first reviews successful family engagement strategies and examines facilitators of and barriers to effective engagement. A model is then presented that can guide social workers, supervisors, and evaluators by operationalizing the process of family engagement. The model first details actions child protection social workers can take to build engagement and proposes indications that effective engagement has been established. The model then details the increases in information, resources, and empowerment that result from family engagement. This model supports efforts of social workers and their supervisors to enhance engagement with families and assists evaluators in identifying whether engagement is present and has been applied in child protection, kinship, and wraparound practice settings.