Improving Child Protection Services: Australian Parents’ and Grandparents’ Perspectives on What Needs to Change

Abstract

This exploratory, small-scale research aimed to understand parents’ and grandparents’ experiences and expectations of child protection investigations. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with nine participants. The central theme, captured as ‘a domino effect’, crystallises the participants’ views of why it is important to improve child protection services: that there were significant practical and relationship repercussions in families’ lives beyond the immediate investigation. The sub-themes that emerged — support within systemic complexity, policies in practice, intervention processes and practices, and ‘it’s just a job to them’ — suggested how child protection services contributed to ‘the domino effect’ in their lives. A final sub-theme indicated participants’ awareness of the complexity and difficulty of child protection as a job, notwithstanding their expressed frustrations. We have made practical recommendations based on participants’ perspectives about ‘what needs to change?’, and suggestions for improvements to practise that centralise social work as a profession which values the professional relationship with service users. We also suggest that the professional relationship should extend beyond the interpersonal to guiding service users within the legal complexities in contemporary child protection. Being exploratory, this study and its recommendations guide future research to contribute to improving child protection services.

Keywords:

• improving child protection
• child protection policy
• child protection practice
• service users’ experiences
• policy and practice change

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge that Deakin University, Australia, provided funding to support this research. A version of this article was presented at the conference, Social Work Social Development 2012: Action and Impact, Stockholm, Sweden, and submitted as a report to the Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare, Melbourne, Australia.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Heather D’Cruz

Heather D’Cruz is an Honorary Fellow, Deakin University, and Consultant: Research and Professional Education in Victoria, Australia. She has nearly 35 years’ experience, first in child and family welfare policy and practice, and later, as a social work educator at five Australian universities. She has authored and edited several scholarly texts and peer-reviewed journal articles. Correspondence to: Heather D’Cruz, School of Health and Social Development, Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria 3220, Australia. Email: [email protected]

Philip Gillingham

Philip Gillingham is a Senior Research Fellow at the School of Social Work and Human Services, University of Queensland. He has extensive experience as a child protection practitioner in the UK and in Australia. More recently, he has been a social work educator at Deakin University and the University of Queensland.