Improving decision-making agreement in child protection cases by using information regarding parents' response to an intervention: A vignette study

Abstract

Out-of-home placement decisions are complex and have a high impact on the lives of children and their parents. This study investigated whether information regarding parents' response to an attachment-based intervention impacted placement decisions and agreement among decision-makers. We presented 144 professionals and Master students with vignettes reflecting child protection cases. In addition to the standard information, half of these vignettes included a description of parents' response to an attachment-based intervention. Participants were asked to read four vignettes (randomly selected out of sixteen) and to indicate whether they would advise an out-of-home placement. Generalized Estimating Equations showed that overall, participants did not converge more in their decisions for vignettes that included a description of parents' response to an attachment-based intervention than for vignettes that contained only standard information. However, the description did increase agreement when the vignettes reflected more ambiguous cases or when parents' described response was positive. Negative descriptions of parents' response increased agreement for Master students, but not for professionals. These findings provide initial evidence that information regarding parents' response to an attachment-based intervention may enhance the quality of placement decisions.

Prospecting the attachment research field: a move to the level of engagement

“…averting risk; Devaney & Spratt, 2009), providing input for a research agenda that matches these needs. Such dialogue has, for example, led to the development of brief assessment instruments for atypical parental behavior (Cooke et al, 2020) and the testing of protocols for intervention-informed decision-making (Cyr & Alink, 2017;Van der Asdonk et al, 2019). As such, attachment research that responds to these concrete needs may be seen as solutionfocused, even though in the case of complex systems, solutions will remain partial and the process will be iterative and tailored towards locally agreed problem formulations (Greenhalgh & Papoutsi, 2018).…”

Effectiveness of an attachment‐based intervention for the assessment of parenting capacities in maltreating families: A randomized controlled trial

“…The absence of beneficial effects of the VIPP-SD protocol for PCAs in this study is unexpected, given that several researchers have argued to use attachment-based interventions in PCAs (Cyr & Alink, 2017;Cyr et al, 2012;Lindauer et al, 2010) and two recent randomized studies have provided initial evidence that such a procedure can lead to a higher quality of placement decisions (Cyr et al, 2015;Van der Asdonk et al, 2019). An explanation for the lack of effects in the current study could be related to the quality of the RAP in the Dutch clinics.…”

“…The quality of a procedure for PCAs depends on the reliability and validity of subsequent placement decisions. Relating this to the current study, the reliability of the proposed assessment approach has been recently investigated in a vignette study where we demonstrated that providing decision‐makers with information about parents’ response to an attachment‐based intervention can lead to increased agreement on placement decisions (Van der Asdonk et al., 2019). This is an important foundation for the current study, because sufficient reliability is a prerequisite for strong validity.…”

“…For instance, if a family is put under supervision for suspected or substantiated child maltreatment and home‐based support is imposed on the family, the VIPP‐SD assessment protocol might contribute to a better‐informed indication of their parenting capacities and therefore lead to better decisions regarding child placement. Based on two recent studies which provided initial evidence in favor of the use of attachment‐based assessments protocols (Cyr et al., 2015; Van der Asdonk et al., 2019), it would be worthwhile to further investigate the effectiveness of different implementations of this approach.…”