Evidence-Based Practice in Child Protection Services: Do We Have Time for This?

The Transferability of Family Assessment Tools between Countries: Reflections on the Intervention Research Approach

“…To address appropriate service delivery to children and their families, it is important to ensure that comprehensive assessments are conducted to determine whether a child is in need of care and protection. The use of applicable assessment tools, in order to ensure that comprehensive family assessments are carried out, could contribute to effective service delivery by enabling social workers to gather the relevant information in a more time‐efficient way (Schiller and Strydom, ). However, assessment tools cannot always be viewed as neutral, and how they are applied can be influenced by the specific social worker's perceptions, knowledge and working conditions.…”

“…The assessment instrument, as mentioned previously, was seen as a possible solution as it contained aspects relevant to child protection services. The way that the assessment tool was compiled enabled the social workers to gather comprehensive information about the family situation with one visit (Schiller and Strydom, ), and it helped them with the finalisation of their investigations. However, the instrument had to be adapted to fit the South African context.…”

“…It also identifies and prioritises the needs of families and services to help social workers with goal formulation, tracking improvement in family wellbeing. This information is aligned with what social workers need when undertaking their statutory investigations (Schiller and Strydom, ). This tool also helps NGOs to identify unmet needs of families at the community level and to develop services to meet such needs, as well as to track improvements and provide a source of comprehensive data for international organisations, policymakers and funders that could be of value in an LDC (NFPN, ).…”

Is Foster Care the Safe Place We Believe It to Be? If Not, Why Not?

“…Although the South African authors mentioned in the introduction do not refer to incidences of abuse or neglect in foster care, they warn against a child protection system overwhelmed by extended families relying on the foster care grant (FCG) to provide for the material needs of the family, and insufficient resources to monitor children in statutory care and investment in prevention and early intervention (HSRC, 2012;Schiller & Strydom, 2018). Böning and Ferreira (2013) also warn that the high caseloads of social workers negatively affects the quality of foster care services, tracking of foster children through the system, and long-term planning based on a foster care plan.…”

“…Mnisi (2015), in a study of factors contributing to the breakdown of foster care of adolescents, reported that in comparison with parents who did not indicate abuse and neglect of foster children as a factor for breakdown, adolescents reported physical and emotional abuse; misuse of the foster care grant; and sexual abuse by someone who was close to the foster family. The South African child protection services are overwhelmed and Schiller and Strydom (2018) warn that investigations are often rushed without attention to detail, overlooking information important to the safety and development of children.…”