Disclosure and assessment in child abuse and maltreatment cases: young people’s and social work professionals’ perspectives

ABSTRACT

This paper explores young people’s stories of receiving (or not receiving) help for abuse and maltreatment as children. Furthermore, it explores what social work professionals’ say they do, and which knowledge and approaches they emphasise when assisting abused and maltreated children or young people and their parents. The findings show the young people tend to focus on professionals’ ability to talk to them, listen and take them seriously, although they may be ambivalent about disclosing violence. Whereas caseworkers tend to focus mainly on identifying and disclosing abuse through standardised approaches and procedures. Taking these empirical findings into consideration, this paper aims to discuss possible implications embedded in different approaches in child abuse and maltreatment cases within the context of Norwegian child welfare services. Applying the social work concept of person-in-situation as the theoretical lens, this analysis sheds light on the mutual interdependency of the individual and context, and the complexities in each individual child abuse case. Discussing how child welfare workers may enquire about and grasp the complexities in child abuse and maltreatment cases, the paper contributes to the debate on professional discretion in light of the increasing trend to standardise investigative procedures in child welfare services.

KEYWORDS:

• Child abuse and maltreatment cases
• young people’s perspectives
• social workers’ perspectives
• social work
• standardised procedures

Acknowledgments

I sincerely thank the young people who participated in this study and who shared their stories with me. I also thank the social work professionals for sharing their experiences of working with child abuse and maltreatment cases.

Notes

1. In this paper, I particularly refer to severe maltreatment, such as physical, psychological and emotional violence and abuse, including domestic violence. For a comprehensive discussion of conceptualisation and definition issues, see (Aadnanes and Gulbrandsen 2017).

2. In this paper, I use environment, context and situation interchangeably, and without specifying whether I refer to personal network or, for example, public institutions. However, I use society or structure to refer specifically to more impersonal entities that are part of the individual’s context, but at the more abstract level.

3. Although I use the phrase ‘mutually constitutive relationship’, I do not necessarily consider the relationship as equal in terms of power, or that each part in the relationship is proportionally influential. The important point is that there is a process of interaction that is not static but dynamic.

4. The ‘person’ in this entity may be the child or the family. Who is considered as the individual will vary from case to case, as each situation is constituted in its own unique ways. Who is included in the entity is not fixed, rather it may change and vary over time and space.

5. ‘Klemetsrudmodellen’ is an experienced-based model developed through several years of work with child abuse and maltreatment and domestic violence cases at one local CWS site in Oslo. The model, which aims to provide a safer life for affected children, is a three-phased method; however, individual caseworkers may select parts of the model to adapt to the proceedings (Arnesen and Diesen 2008).