Child welfare workers’ experiences of obstacles in care order preparation: a cross-country comparison

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the significant obstacles that child protection workers in four countries, England, Finland, Norway and the USA (CA), believe they would face at their workplace, in a case of a child removal decision. There are many potential barriers employees may experience in their work practice, either external factors, organizational factors or individual factors, or combinations of these. Presented with the same situation, we ask workers what they perceive as significant obstacles, if any, for preparing a care order at their work place. The findings show that roughly two out of three workers say they would experience obstacles, and the main obstacle by far is related to time and/or large caseloads. Lack of organizational structures or poor management is the second major obstacle, followed by collaborative problems with external partners and challenges related to providing evidence. Only a few workers mention individual factors. The workers’ perspectives show that the obstacles they experience may have a negative influence on the quality of their decision-making. The study indicates that improvements do not firstly require more leadership or structural changes, but more time and resources to limit caseloads. There are country differences showing that perceptions of what is sufficient time and resources are highly relative, as the caseloads and actual time available for workers vary significantly across countries.

SAMMENDRAG

Artikkelen utforsker sentrale barrierer som barnevernsansatte opplever å møte i sitt arbeid med en sak om omsorgsovertakelse, sammenlignet i fire land (England, Finland, Norge og California i USA). Potensielle barrierer i barnevernsarbeid kan være relatert til eksterne faktorer, organisatoriske faktorer, individuelle faktorer eller ulike kombinasjoner av disse. Etter å ha blitt presentert for det samme scenariet, er barnevernsansatte så spurt om deres oppfatning av barrierer i tilfredsstillende saksforberedelse. Studiens funn tilsier at to av tre barnevernsansatte opplever konkrete barrierer, hvor den mest fremtredende er relatert til misforholdet mellom tid og antall saker. Mangel på organisatoriske strukturer og manglende eller dårlig veiledning er og sentralt, etterfulgt av samarbeidsproblemer med eksterne aktører og anskaffelse av bevis til saken. Bare et fåtall ansatte nevner individuelle faktorer. Barnevernsarbeidernes responser tilsier at barrierene de møter utfordrer kvaliteten på beslutningene. Studien indikerer at forbedring ikke nødvendigvis omfatter mer lederskap eller strukturelle endringer, men tid og ressurser for å redusere antall saker per ansatt. Oppfatning av «nok» tid og ressurser er derimot relativ, ettersom disse faktorene varierer i stor grad mellom studiens fire land.

KEYWORDS:

• Child welfare
• comparative approaches
• organizations/management

NØKKELORD:

• omsorgsovertakelse
• barrierer
• barnevernssystem
• barnevernsansatte
• beslutningsfatting
• komparasjon

Acknowledgements

We extend our gratitude to the child welfare workers who participated in the project. Many thanks also to research assistant Oda Krogh Læret for reliability test the coding of the data material, and to Ph.D. student Eveliina Heinonen for translating and reliability test the coding of the Finnish material. The paper was presented at the BASPCAN conference in Edinburgh, April 2015, and we are grateful for the feedback we received there.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Ida Juhasz is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Department of Administration & Organization Theory at the University of Bergen, Norway. She has a Masters’ degree in Sociology from the University of Bergen, and has worked as a research assistant and researcher for the research project ‘Legitimacy and Fallibility in Child Welfare Services: A Cross-Country Study of Decision-Making’ before starting her PhD. Her Ph.D. project is a comparative analysis of care order decisions concerning newborn children, and aims to explore how these decisions are assessed and justified.

Marit Skivenes is Professor of Political Science at the Department of Administration & Organization Theory at the University of Bergen, Norway. She has extensive experience in comparative research on child welfare systems, and decision-making processes within these systems. Besides teaching and departmental obligations, she has managed and completed several large-scale, cross-country research projects and established an internationally renowned child welfare research network. She has contributed to the field with several co-edited books, book chapters, reports and peer-reviewed journal articles, focusing on child welfare policy and practice in Norway, and also comparing these across countries.

Notes

† Our names on this paper are ordered alphabetically.

1 However, Burns and Christie (2013) point to also considering mobility when researching turnover.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Norwegian Research Fund [grant number 217115].