Child Protection Service Delivery Research Articles

Enablers and barriers to the implementation of Multisystemic Therapy for Child Abuse and Neglect (MST-CAN) into the routine delivery of child protection services in New South Wales, Australia

BackgroundMultisystemic Therapy for Child Abuse and Neglect (MST-CAN) aims to reduce the likelihood of child maltreatment and out-of-home care (OOHC) entry for high-risk children aged between six and 17 years. ObjectiveTo identify the key enablers and barriers to implementing MST-CAN into the routine delivery of child protection services. Participants/settingTwenty MST-CAN and policy experts, and 25 service providers, involved in the delivery of MST-CAN in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. MethodsSemi-structured interviews with MST-CAN and policy experts were thematically analyzed to identify enablers and barriers to the uptake of MST-CAN. These themes were quantified using a modified Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) scoring approach: −2 for barriers, 0 for neutral, and 2 for enablers. The nominal group technique (NGT) identified and ranked the enablers and barriers to MST-CAN delivery perceived by service providers in two discussion groups. ResultsThe semi-structured interviews generated 15 themes, of which two enablers and four barriers were identified using CFIR scoring. The two NGTs identified six enablers and six barriers. Key enablers common to both interviews and NGTs were the training and supervision of therapists delivering MST-CAN in NSW, and MST-CAN’s analytic approach. Key barriers included referral and adaptation challenges for the NSW context and population (including Aboriginal families), staff recruitment difficulties, and problems with the absence and interpretation of outcome data. ConclusionsBarriers to sustained implementation of MST-CAN may be overcome by revising staff qualification thresholds and data collection procedures, and improved adaptation of MST-CAN in partnership with Aboriginal organizations.

Identifying enablers and barriers to the implementation of Functional family Therapy – Child Welfare (FFT-CW®) into the routine delivery of child protection services in New South Wales, Australia

BackgroundFunctional Family Therapy – Child Welfare (FFT-CW®) aims to reduce the risk of child maltreatment and out-of-home care entry for vulnerable children. ObjectiveTo identify enablers and barriers to implementing FFT-CW® into the routine delivery of child protection services from policy and service provider perspectives. Participants/settingEighteen program and policy experts, and 54 service providers, involved in the delivery of FFT-CW® across 6 districts in New South Wales, Australia. MethodsSemi-structured interviews with policy and program experts, and four discussion groups with service providers using nominal group technique (NGT). Interview data were thematically analyzed to identify enablers and barriers. An adapted Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) scoring system was used to quantify themes, with scores of −2 assigned for barriers, 0 for neutral, and 2 for enablers. NGT was used to generate and rank enablers and barriers of program implementation with service providers. ResultsThe semi-structured interviews generated 16 themes, from which three enablers and four barriers were identified using CFIR scoring. The NGT discussions generated nine enablers and eight barriers. Key enablers common to both interviews and NGTs were FFT-CW’s therapeutic and empowering approach, model purveyor training and support, and the supervision and feedback provided to service providers. Key barriers included referral difficulties, staff burnout, turnover and training logistical challenges, and problems with data collection and the safety impacts of outcome measures on participants. ConclusionsSustained uptake of FFT-CW® is likely feasible and evaluating its effectiveness within the routine delivery of NSW child protection services is warranted.

Critical Reflective Learning in Social Work Graduate Research: Learnings from an Australian Study in Child Protection Service Delivery

Abstract Assumptions and worldviews shape social work research, particularly when influenced by settler colonialism in contemporary Australia. This article explores experiences from graduate research drawing on Ruch’s model of reflective learning and Fook and Gardner’s action-orientated approach to critical reflection. Written following PhD completion, it investigates significant learnings by reviewing reflective journal entries, feedback on draft manuscripts and supervision notes that were made during the time of the study. Deconstructing and reconstructing assumptions across all phases of graduate research show the trajectory from experienced social worker to novice researcher and the context within which this learning takes place. This process foregrounds graduate research influenced by Australia’s demographic, historical and political context in which the impact of colonisation continues to reverberate. Critical interrogation is required for socially just change. Currently, there remains a risk that graduate research produces knowledge that is founded on and shared through white perspectives, maintaining the status quo. Critical reflective learning needs a stimulating and safe learning environment that encourages hidden assumptions to surface and be openly questioned. This study concludes that personal and professional biases unconsciously influence graduate research and need to be identified in a constructive and supportive learning environment.

Addressing cumulative harm: responding to chronic child maltreatment in the context of an intensive family support service

PurposeAdverse childhood experiences that are consistently experienced over a sustained period of time throughout childhood result in an accumulation of childhood adversity, which is often referred to in the literature as cumulative harm. This paper aims to closely examine statutory child protection practice, which favours an episodic and incident-focused approach to assessing risk and harm, failing to account for the evaluation of the accumulation of adversity and harm, commonly experienced by children exposed to maltreatment. The paper defines an existing gap in practice frameworks to adequately identify and respond to the accumulation of adversity.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on practice experiences in Queensland Australia, the paper examines service delivery responses to cumulative harm in the context of the Intensive Family Support model of service delivery.FindingsWithin current frameworks for child protection service delivery, there is no method of assessing the diverse and cumulative effects of ongoing chronic child maltreatment and adversity, despite research confirming that cumulative harm very often co-occurs with other child protection concerns. To effectively and collaboratively intervene in matters of chronic and cumulative abuse and neglect, practitioners and stakeholders must be guided by frameworks and assessments that accurately recognise and acknowledge the impact of ongoing exposure to adverse experiences and maltreatment.Research limitations/implicationsThe need for a valid and reliable assessment method that draws together all elements contributing to the chronic maltreatment experience for a child and family: multiplicity, diversity and severity.Social implicationsPractice solutions tailored to each child’s specific cumulative experiences of adversity and maltreatment will promote better social, emotional and health outcomes across the lifespan.Originality/valueThis paper highlights a significant gap in assessment and practice frameworks and advances the impetus for cumulative harm to be proactively integrated into social care and service delivery.

THE CURRENT LANDSCAPE OF CHILD PROTECTION SERVICES IN SOUTH AFRICA: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

Child protection services are seen as the largest field of social work service delivery in South Africa. Repeated warnings of the ‘crisis state’ of child protection services have gone unheeded. The aim of this article is to determine the current landscape of child protection service delivery and research within the South African context. The developmental social welfare approach was used as the epistemological framework for this systematic review. Findings indicated a significant emphasis on statutory services and a lack of resources for family preservation efforts. Appropriate costing models should be generated to specify critical needs and garner support from stakeholders.

Transnational Social Workers’ Understanding of Australian First Nations Perspectives in Statutory Child Protection

ABSTRACT Chronic staff shortages and high rates of turnover in child protection programs create opportunities for social work mobility across the world. Australian child protection departments actively recruit social workers from the United Kingdom and Ireland. This strategy may cause tension relating to the application of known Western social work practice and theory and limited understanding of Australian First Nations worldviews. Australia continues to struggle with the ongoing impact of colonisation; First Nations children are overrepresented in child protection service delivery. The research explored the understanding held by overseas-born and -educated social workers from the UK and Ireland (transnational social workers or TNSWs) of Australian First Nations peoples, when they migrate to practice in frontline child protection. Interviews with 13 practitioners across two time points explored social work practice in the transnational context. The study found that the majority of TNSWs had limited understanding of social work in a colonised country. The results provide a foundation to rethink how TNSW practice is influenced by place-related change. This research identified a need to raise transnational social workers’ awareness of Australian First Nations child rearing practices that may lie outside their experiential understanding. IMPLICATIONS Transnational social workers may advance their understanding of First Nations peoples and their perspectives through increasing their awareness of differences in their personal lived experiences from that of Australian First Nations peoples. The practice of cultural humility may reduce harm in transnational child protection practice. Critical reflection may enable the emergence of counter-colonial thinking in child protection practice with Australian First Nations peoples.

Out-of-home placement and regional variations in poverty and health and social services spending: A multilevel analysis

This paper examines the extent to which regional variations in poverty and health and social services spending impact the risk of placement, after controlling for individual-level risk factors and regional latent differences in delivery of child protection services. Clinical administrative child protection data were merged with income and health and social services spending data for the province of Quebec; the final data set included all children (N=122,466) investigated for maltreatment for the first time between April 1, 2002 and March 31, 2010, of which 22.6% (N=27,710) were placed in out-of-home care. Multilevel hazard results indicate that poverty, controlling for health and social services spending, contributes to the increased risk of placement. Specifically, poverty and health and social services spending account for 57.1% of the variation in regional placement for younger children <5years of age and 38.1% for children age 5 to 11years.

Make the Promise True: a Monitoring and Evaluation Framework for Measuring Quality in Child Protection Service Delivery in Zimbabwe

Promising Quality: making sure that we deliver excellent services for children, (UNICEF 2012a), is an innovative monitoring and evaluation framework of original and standardised measures developed in Zimbabwe to support child protection providers to deliver quality services for children within a multi-agency child protection system. It is intended to meet the demands of governments, donors and other stakeholders for information on the effectiveness and efficiency of development programming but importantly is a practice which ensures downward accountability to children. It can also be utilised to track programme performance, and in broad terms, value for money in child protection service delivery. Further, Promising Quality has important implications for the creation and strengthening of different types of social capital between children, organisations and government. Promising Quality is constructed to encourage children’s full and meaningful participation in the monitoring and evaluation (ME it poses three questions and uses four specifically designed instruments to find out if an organization is delivering what children need where and when they need it. In so doing, gaps in the functioning of a comprehensive child protection system are highlighted such that improvements in programming, policy advocacy and investment can be made. This paper argues that Promising Quality - its inception and continuing evolution - is a core component of a rights-based, participatory national child protection system in developing contexts and beyond because of its ability to track gains in efficiency as well as child protection outcomes.

Recommendations for Improving Cultural Competency When Working with Ethnic Minority Families in Child Protection Systems in Australia

Australia’s research and knowledge base on cultural competency has been slow to develop. To help address this gap, the New South Wales (NSW) Department of Family and Community Services (FaCS) funded a large scale study in this area, which included a detailed literature review. The paper reports on key findings from that review including that collectivist values are at odds with ‘child-centred’ philosophies of child protection; there is an inherent tension between the right to equal protection from harm and the right for respect in cultural differences in parenting and family functioning (‘cultural absolutism’ versus ‘cultural relativism’); there are factors that uniquely characterise ‘the migrant context’ (especially lack of awareness of child protection laws and systems, economic disadvantage, and fear of authority); and that cultural competency is separable from cultural awareness and cultural sensitivity, and also different from addressing language barriers. However, in reviewing the literature it became apparent that the specific roles and responsibilities of workers, agencies, and systems were not clearly delineated. Thus this paper also aimed to address this unmet need. Identifying their unique roles and responsibilities can help ensure that the delivery of child protection services are efficiently and effectively mobilised from both the ‘top’ and ‘bottom’ to benefit all ethnic minority families. Moreover, any implementation of cultural competency needs to move beyond the emphasis on culture and acknowledge the dimensions of inferiority and oppression to truly promote value for diversity and protect ethnic minority children from the dangers of systematic disadvantage that institutional racism represents.

The impacts of accessible child protection services on services, jobs, and families

This multi-faceted study assessed the differences between accessible and central child protection service delivery sites in Ontario on: (1) family functioning; (2) front-line child protection service providers' satisfaction with services; (3) parents' satisfaction with services; (4) the services and supports available to families; (5) front-line service job satisfaction; and (6) front-line helping relationships in child welfare. A quasi-experimental outcome design gathered data from parents at case-opening and approximately 10 months later. Semi-structured individual or group qualitative interviews were conducted with parents, front-line service providers, and supervisors/managers. Information also was gathered from agency files. Front-line service providers completed an employment questionnaire. Findings indicated that the accessible sites were able to foster a greater proportion of cooperative helping relationships with families and to create more service partnerships. Parents at the accessible sites were more positive about their service involvements and more willing to ask for help again in the future. Front-line child protection service providers at both service delivery models described positive aspects of their jobs as well as frustrations with the expectations of the formal child protection system.

Controlling children's lives: covert messages in child protection service reports

This article presents central findings from a detailed examination of written documents in 50 child protection cases from the Norwegian welfare state. In so doing, it explores issues related to the social consequences of document writing in welfare state services. Using a frame drawn from Foucault's theory of discursive rites, it looks at the writing of certain documents as ritual performances involving on the one hand, various chains of power and on the other, processes reinforcing ruling definitions of normality. The examination shows that documents do more than satisfy bureaucratic demands for record keeping about the delivery of child protection services. These records also serve as distributors of social identities and social positions for children and their families. Moreover, the examination also reveals the contours of a paradox whereby, activities intended to help and to protect some children often involve using these youngsters to reaffirm normality in society and to confirm the existing social order. These findings indicate that there is a need for greater sensibility to ethical issues involved in documents writing.

Where now for ‘child protection’ in Scotland?

AbstractIn common with the rest of the UK, child care and protection practice in Scotland has undergone unprecedented change over the last ten years, including a wide‐ranging three‐year Child Protection Reform Programme. In 2006, The University of Dundee's Centre for Child Care and Protection and Barnardo's Scotland Research and Development team were commissioned by the then Scottish Executive to undertake a process review of the Child Protection Reform Programme (Daniel et al., 2007). Drawing on findings from the process review, this article considers the impact of the Child Protection Reform Programme. The process review concluded that, in the view of the respondents, the Child Protection Reform Programme made a substantive contribution towards the improvement and delivery of child protection services in Scotland, particularly in terms of raising awareness and increased multi‐agency working. It was beyond the scope of the review to measure outcomes for children as a result of the reforms. Since the completion of the Child Protection Reform Programme, national policy emphasis has broadened from ‘child protection’ towards integrated support for children under the Getting it Right for Every Child reforms of children's services. The paper concludes with a discussion around where ‘child protection’ now fits within this context of universal support for children and argues that there is a need to ensure that the valuable work which was done to improve child protection services in Scotland under the Child Protection Reform Programme is not lost. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley &amp; Sons, Ltd.

Approaches to child protection case management for cases involving people with disabilities

Objectives This exploratory study examines the delivery of child protection services by county child protection agencies involving cases with a family member with a disability. Method Telephone surveys were conducted with the directors or their designees of 89% of the child protection agencies in a Midwestern state. Respondents were asked about the policies and/or procedures for approaching cases involving a person with a disability and the barriers and strengths agencies have in serving people with disabilities. Results Only 6.7% of respondents reported their agency had a written policy related to serving persons with a disability. There were 18 different approaches to serving clients with a disability within child protection, with the most common being informally teaming for information, dual case assignment, and teaming with an outside consultant. Five counties had specialty workers who were experts in both child protection and disability. Barriers reported varied between rural and non-rural counties, with the most important barriers being lack of resources, lack of knowledge regarding disabilities, systems conflicts, and rural issues, such as lack of providers and lack of transportation. Strengths included accessing and coordinating services, individualizing services, good collaboration and creativity. Conclusion While few county agencies had any written policies, both formal and informal collaboration is happening at the individual level. The lack of standardization in providing services indicates a need for more attention to issues regarding disability within child protection, including more training for workers, the development of models of collaborative case management and the removal of systemic barriers.

How can a strengths approach increase safety in a child protection context?

Child protection is one of the most difficult fields for social welfare professionals to work within. Being an enabler on one hand and an agent of social control on the other, can create a dichotomy that leaves practitioners feeling like they need a different set of skills to do each component. Maybe a strengths approach framework can provide the link between the two. A strengths approach is greater than a set of strengths-based tools. It is a way of conceptualising the organisation and delivery of child protection services. This article expresses the current views of a practitioner with 37 years experience in the child and family welfare field.