From concerned to convinced: reaching decisions about out‐of‐home care in Norwegian Child Welfare Services

Christiansen, Øivin; Anderssen, Norman

doi:10.1111/j.1365-2206.2009.00635.x

Cited by 49 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…A number of factors seemed to be at work in combinations across the practitioners' accounts. When parents' needs and problems are seen as the main focus of the practitioner role, children's problems and views are not heard (Nybom 2005;Christiansen and Anderssen 2010). This approach has been associated with particular conceptualisations of childhood which view children's interests as subsumed by adults' interests (Trinder 1997).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“Grown-ups Never Understand Anything by Themselves …”

Fern¹

2014

Practice

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This paper explores the ways in which social worker practitioners conceptualise childhood and the significance of this for developing social work practice. The data was generated through qualitative semi-structured interviews and group discussions with practitioners who were working directly with children in child protection or children's service centres in Iceland. The interviews formed an initial stage of an action research study, informed by young people who had interacted with social services, and designed to develop practice in line with the young people's views and expectations. The findings indicated there were contrasting and co-existing conceptualisations that had different implications for children. On the one hand, conceptualisations of children as problems and children as incompetent appeared, from practitioner's accounts, to have undermined children's ability to present their own concerns and maintain control over what happened to them. In contrast, conceptualisations broadly characterised as children active in defining problems and children participating on an equal footing appeared to assist practitioners in being prepared to promote children's active involvement in defining problems and finding solutions. The analysis suggested that how practitioners think about children is an important area of enquiry and highlighted the shift in thinking required to develop more effective participatory practice.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“Grown-ups Never Understand Anything by Themselves …”

Fern¹

2014

Practice

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“…First, it may be the result of poor quality child welfare assessment. Social workers have a tendency to direct their attention more toward the parents than to the children (Christiansen & Anderssen, 2010). Consequently, foster children's experiences and problems are at risk of going undiagnosed.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…inadequate housing, poverty and domestic violence) carry more weight in placement decisions than do children's behavioral problems. In 75-80% of out-of-home placements parenting and familial problems are an issue (Britner & Mossler, 2002;Christiansen & Anderssen, 2010;DePanfilis & Scannapieco, 1994;Noonan & Burke, 2005).…”

Section: Research Into Clusters Of Children In Foster Carementioning

confidence: 98%

“…In addition, many researchers point out that out-of-home placement decisions are taken under conditions of uncertainty and ambiguity. As a result they are by and large unreliable and rarely rational and/or based on scientific knowledge (Christiansen & Anderssen, 2010). These decisions are strongly influenced by the decision maker's profession (e.g.…”

Section: Research Into Clusters Of Children In Foster Carementioning

confidence: 99%

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Foster care assessment: A study of the placement decision process in Flanders

Vanderfaeillie

Pijnenburg

Damen

et al. 2015

Child Abuse & Neglect

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“…Cases that remain on the brink of out-of-home care are described in this article as being on the tipping point between two different logics, and these logics can be understood as binary oppositions. Making the decision to move a case from one logic to the other puts pressure on the caseworker to justify that this move is correct and desirable (Backe-Hansen, 2003/4).Cases with visible signs of maltreatment, violence and abuse tend to force a decision (Christiansen and Anderssen, 2010;Dubowitz, 2007;McSherry, 2007). By contrast, cases without clear evidence tend to linger in the system.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Colligation in child welfare work: Decision-making in a case on the tipping point

Skotte

2016

Qualitative Social Work

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Colligation in human services is the more or less structured process of selecting and ordering information using relevant theories and concepts to assemble a credible and 'followable' account of a client's situation, according to Andrew Abbott (1984). Through colligation, caseworkers limit complexity in light of professional knowledge, common sense and legal guidance, preparing for a formal classification of the problem. In this article, I argue that studying processes of colligation in child welfare allows for a nuanced exploration of how structural, cultural and individual aspects of professional practice interact when grasping a professional mandate concerning children, parenting and risk.When introduced to a child or a family previously unknown to child welfare services, the caseworker needs to specify the problem at hand. Such a specification involves describing the situation using child welfare vocabulary, and narrowing down the options available for action.Borrowing a term from medicine, Abbott calls this diagnosis, and it involves the two steps of colligation and classification:Colligation is assembly of a 'picture' of the client; it consists largely of rules declaring what kinds of evidence are relevant and irrelevant, valid and invalid, as well as rules specifying the admissible level of ambiguity. Classification means referring the colligated picture to the dictionary of professionally legitimate problems. (Abbott, 1988: 41) While classification is a deductive activity that involves placing items under headings, colligation is an inductive process that involves identifying pieces of information that are relevant to the mapping of a particular professional problem (Abbott, 1984). Cases involving suspected neglect challenge the caseworkers' ability to define the cutting point between adequate and inadequate care in relation to the particular child in need. Out-ofhome placement is a measure of last resort, involving the strongest public intervention into the private lives of families, and there is no partial placement. A child is under the physical custody of either the parents or the child welfare system. Cases that remain on the brink of out-of-home care are described in this article as being on the tipping point between two different logics, and these logics can be understood as binary oppositions. Making the decision to move a case from one logic to the other puts pressure on the caseworker to justify that this move is correct and desirable (Backe-Hansen, 2003/4).Cases with visible signs of maltreatment, violence and abuse tend to force a decision (Christiansen and Anderssen, 2010;Dubowitz, 2007;McSherry, 2007). By contrast, cases without clear evidence tend to linger in the system. In an interview study of 83 social workers who had recently made decisions regarding out-of-home care, Christiansen and Anderssen (2010) pointed to the caseworkers' reluctance to make decisions for placement when lacking conclusive evidence. Their study suggests that without the dramaturgy of the more obvious

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From concerned to convinced: reaching decisions about out‐of‐home care in Norwegian Child Welfare Services

Cited by 49 publications

References 33 publications

“Grown-ups Never Understand Anything by Themselves …”

“Grown-ups Never Understand Anything by Themselves …”

Foster care assessment: A study of the placement decision process in Flanders

Colligation in child welfare work: Decision-making in a case on the tipping point

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