Child Welfare as Child Protection Then and Now: What Social Workers Did and Continue to Do

David Hayes, Trevor Spratt

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    31 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    The research reported here builds on the work of one of the authors who, some thirteen years ago, in a similar study, examined the potential for social workers to shift from a child protection to a child welfare practice orientation. As with the original research study, this present project seeks to examine the everyday practices of social workers with children and families as revealed by file analysis, vignette questionnaires (reported here) and interviews with families and social workers (to be reported). A twenty-item vignette questionnaire was completed by fifty-five social workers (65.5 per cent response rate). It was found that there was little agreement on coding decisions with regard to which cases should be designated child protection or child welfare. Further analysis revealed that, regardless of such coding decisions, families tended to receive similar responses by social workers. The results demonstrate that, whilst there has been a reduction in the headline numbers of child protection investigations undertaken across Health and Social Care Trusts in Northern Ireland, the everyday patterns of practice with families and children where parenting concerns remain evident reflect child protection risk management priorities and practices. 

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)615-635
    Number of pages21
    JournalBritish Journal of Social Work
    Volume44
    Issue number3
    Early online date24 Oct 2012
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2014

    Keywords

    • Child protection
    • child welfare
    • children and families

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