Getting there: heuristics and biases as rationing shortcuts in professional childcare judgments and decision-making – an integrative understanding

Abstract

This article presents the initial parts of a research project about shortcuts in social work with children and young persons in Denmark. We first present some of our findings from an integrative study of the literature of decision-making in social work with children and young persons. By ‘decision-making’, we refer to professionals’ (individuals or groups) initial assessments and recommendations for further action in childcare cases. The purpose is to develop an integrated understanding of heuristics and biases as these terms are currently applied in social work – and how they are related to concepts of rationing of services. In the second part of the article, we relate our findings to four selected empirical studies of individual and organisational factors in childcare decision-making. The methodology of this part consists of a selective and limited database search for relevant empirical studies, as well as two local Danish empirical studies of which we were already aware. This analysis points at simplification and routinisation as being significant rationing mechanisms in relation to cue-based ‘take-the-best’ shortcuts, in the form of both heuristics and biases, such as anchoring decisions in preferred, recent and available information. These are meaningful in small-scale environments. On a larger scale, and in hindsight, they may seem to conflict with the intentions of more holistic assessments in social work theory and the law. We thus conclude that rationing mechanisms in the decision-making environment as supported by law, local management, social work methods and individual understandings connect to both heuristics and biases and that the integrative understanding is helpful in order to describe and understand these mechanisms.