Reasons for placement decisions in a case of suspected child abuse: The role of reasoning, work experience and attitudes in decision-making.

Child welfare and child protection workers regularly make placement decisions in child abuse cases, but how they reach these decisions is not well understood. This study focuses on workers' rationales. The aim was to investigate the kinds of arguments provided in placement decisions and whether these arguments were predictors for the decision, in addition to the decision-makers' risk assessment, work experience and attitudes towards placement. The sample consisted of 214 professionals and 381 students from the Netherlands. The participants were presented with a vignette describing a case of alleged child abuse and were asked to determine whether the abuse was substantiated, to assess risks and to recommend an intervention. The participants' placement attitudes were assessed using a structured questionnaire. We found that the participants provided a wide range of arguments, but that core arguments - such as the suspected abuse, parenting and parent-child interaction - were often missing. Regression analyses showed that the higher the perceived danger to the child and the more positive the participants' attitudes towards placement, the more likely the participants would be to propose placing the child in care. Arguments related to the severity of the problems (i.e., suspected abuse, parenting and the child's development) as well as the parents' perceived cooperation also influenced placement decisions. The findings indicate trends in the decision-making process, in the sense that participants who decided to place the child out-of-home emphasized different arguments and had different attitudes towards out-of-home placement than those who did not. We discuss the implications of our findings.

Decision making in child protection: An international comparative study on maltreatment substantiation, risk assessment and interventions recommendations, and the role of professionals' child welfare attitudes.

Child welfare professionals regularly make crucial decisions that have a significant impact on children and their families. The present study presents the Judgments and Decision Processes in Context model (JUDPIC) and uses it to examine the relationships between three independent domains: case characteristic (mother's wish with regard to removal), practitioner characteristic (child welfare attitudes), and protective system context (four countries: Israel, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland and Spain); and three dependent factors: substantiation of maltreatment, risk assessment, and intervention recommendation. The sample consisted of 828 practitioners from four countries. Participants were presented with a vignette of a case of alleged child maltreatment and were asked to determine whether maltreatment was substantiated, assess risk and recommend an intervention using structured instruments. Participants' child welfare attitudes were assessed. The case characteristic of mother's wish with regard to removal had no impact on judgments and decisions. In contrast, practitioners' child welfare attitudes were associated with substantiation, risk assessments and recommendations. There were significant country differences on most measures. The findings support most of the predictions derived from the JUDPIC model. The significant differences between practitioners from different countries underscore the importance of context in child protection decision making. Training should enhance practitioners' awareness of the impact that their attitudes and the context in which they are embedded have on their judgments and decisions.