Attitudes on the Responsibility for Child Safety: Key Child Protection Worker Characteristics

ABSTRACT

The child protection workers’ attitude toward responsibility for child safety is complex and requires further examination. Using the Quality Improvement Project on Differential Response data from Illinois we examined the characteristics that influence worker attitude towards child safety. The attitude variable measures workers’ belief in family responsibility for child safety compared to state responsibility for child safety. Regression analyses suggest that self-perception of skills, confidence in community resources, confidence in the child protection system, and worker age significantly predict worker attitude. Findings support organizations to direct resources towards shifting attitudes in the direction that favors agency mandate and needs.

KEYWORDS:

• Child protection workers
• family preservation
• child safety
• worker attitudes

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kristina Nikolova

Kristina Nikolova is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto. Her research has focused on child welfare services, intimate partner violence, and gender inequality. She has authored multiple articles and reports and has presented her research in Canada and the United States. She is currently completing her dissertation on the relationship between national and international policy implementation and self-reported rates of intimate partner violence in low-income countries.

Kristen Lwin

Kristen Lwin is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto and the Executive Director of Practice and Research Together (PART), a knowledge translation organization that seeks to increase the use of evidence informed practice in Canadian child welfare by translating academic research for child welfare agencies and their workers. She has extensive research experience in program evaluation and assessment. She is currently completing her dissertation on the relationship between child welfare worker education and case-related decision making.

John D. Fluke

John D. Fluke is the Associate Director of System Research and Evaluation at the Kempe Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Abuse and Neglect and Associate Professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine He has over 30 years of experience in social service delivery system research in the area of Child Welfare and Mental Health Services for children. He is internationally recognized as a researcher specializing in assessing, analyzing, and teaching on decision making in human services delivery systems. He is also active in the area of national child maltreatment data collection systems and analysis and has worked with data collection programs in the Balkans, Canada, Saudi Arabia, the US, and for UNICEF. He has conducted research and evaluation at all levels of government, in the private not-for-profit sector, and with national foundations and associations. He is also known for his innovative and informative research and evaluation work in the areas of child maltreatment prevalence, child welfare administrative data analysis, workload and costing, and performance and outcome measurement for children and family services.