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ABSTRACT
This quantitative study of decision-making factors related to screening maltreatment reports was conducted to investigate whether personal biases, values, and stereotypes surrounding parental drug use and race influenced screening decisions. In one southeastern state, 86 child welfare intake supervisors reviewed 10 scenarios alleging maltreatment. Participants decided which reports to accept for investigation, identified influential decision-making factors, and rated personal and organizational values surrounding parental drug use on a scale developed by the researcher. Participants' decision-making patterns suggest that when their values and child welfare policies conflicted in their desire to protect children, supervisors were willing to compromise policy standards for initiating investigations. The social justice implications of these findings are important for child welfare workers and administrators to consider.
Notes
Acknowledgements: This study was supported by the Guilford County Department of Social Services. I would like to gratefully acknowledge the support of the administration, the Child Protective Services supervisors, and the intake unit. For their mentoring and constructive feedback, I am indebted to Robert Wineburg and Kenneth Gruber, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and to Marilyn Biggerstaff, Pat Dattalo, Ann Nichols-Casebolt, and, particularly, Humberto Fabelo, Virginia Commonwealth University. Appreciation is also expressed to the anonymous reviewers for their insights and feedback. This article developed from a presentation made at the annual conference of the Society for Social Work Research, January 14, 2005.
∗p = .003.
∗t (84) = 2.04, p = .04.
∗t (81) = 8.11, p < .001.
∗t (84) = −.30, p = .76;
∗∗t (84) = 1.46, p = .15.