A national reform of child protection practice in Israel includes the ambition of strengthening children's participation in intervention decisions carried out in formal committees, called Planning, Intervention and Evaluation Committees. A qualitative study was conducted of how well this was being achieved by following 21 case studies of families referred to the committees over six months. Data was collected from interviews with social workers, field observations of the committees and a document review. A systems approach was undertaken as a conceptual framework in order to allow a whole-organisational understanding of what is happening in the field, and why. The key finding was a very limited realisation of the reform's aim. Only seven children attended the committees, and they had little influence on decisions, which appears to have made them less co-operative in implementing them. Those who did not attend rarely had their views conveyed to the committee by their social workers. The reform's lack of success is explained by being ill-suited to the organisational working environment and culture. The analysis identified a number of systemic factors influencing the failure to give greater priority to children's views, including: lack of skill and time, organisational messages about practice priorities and paternalistic ideology.
Based on the premise that functional, multi-professional work in the child protection process is crucial to the delivery of effective service, this article reports on a qualitative study carried out to evaluate inter-agency and multidisciplinary practice in Israeli decision-making committees. The investigation was directed by the systems approach and looked at practice in the context of the work environment. It examined the cases of 21 families referred to the committees of one of seven social services departments, with follow-up after six months. Data collection involved observations of the discussions and interviews with social workers. According to the findings, school representatives were the only professionals outside of the social service system to participate in the committees, and the committee chairs and senior social workers were dominant in making intervention decisions. Indication of groupthink bias was also found. The follow-up data revealed partial implementation of intervention plans and limited improvement in the children's condition. The analysis identified several systemic sources of difficulty towards achieving meaningful interagency working, including a lack of legislation and departmental organizational conditions. The study advocates an alternative, fresh, whole system approach to the delivery of services for vulnerable children and families.
This study investigated child protection decision-making practices of healthcare-professionals in community-health-services. We examined the effect of heuristics in professional judgments regarding suspected maltreatment, as affected by the child’s ethnicity, gender, and family socioeconomic-status, as well as the healthcare-worker’s workload-stress, and personal and professional background. Furthermore, we examined how these variables influence judgments regarding suspected maltreatment and intentions to consult and report child-maltreatment. We used an experimental survey design including vignettes manipulating the child’s characteristics. Data was collected from 412 professionals employed at various community-health-service-clinics of the largest health-management organization in northern Israel. Findings show that all subjective factors have a significant effect on suspected child-maltreatment assessment, which appears as a significant predictor of later decisions regarding consultation and reporting. This study lends support to prior research indicating that healthcare-professionals’ decisions may incorporate biases, and suggests how the effects of these biases’ are mediated through a sequence of decisions. Recommendations focus on providing regular consultation opportunities for practitioners.
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