Partnering With Parents: Reviewing the Evidence for Motivational Interviewing in Child Welfare

Abstract

Child welfare workers (CWWs) face challenges to engaging families, including initial parental resistance, service plan noncompliance and other barriers. Adopting a motivational interviewing (MI) framework may improve engagement and collaboration between CWWs and parents, thereby leading to better child welfare (CW) outcomes. This comprehensive narrative review identifies the use of MI in CW, the outcomes of MI use and the gaps in the literature. Of the 16 articles that met inclusion criteria for our search, 12 suggested MI’s value in parenting skills, parent/child mental health, retention in services, substance use, and CW recidivism. Four of these studies specifically focused on CWW. Future studies should examine specific CW outcomes such as reunification, parent/child relationships, recidivism and parent/child mental health.

Motivational Interviewing in Child Welfare Services: A Systematic Review

“…Thus, we agree with previous arguments (Forrester, Westlake, & Glynn, 2012; Hohman, 1998) that MI is a theoretically relevant approach for working with families in CW. Additionally, this review comes to a similar conclusion as Shah and colleagues (2018) that evidence in support of MI is promising, though limited. In spite of MI’s conceptual appropriateness for families involved in CW, this review identified few studies evaluating the impact of MI-trained CW workers on placement in OOHC and no studies evaluating their impact on recurrent child maltreatment.…”

“…Given the success of MI in contexts marked by ambivalence, involuntariness, and anger, MI is an approach with face validity for individuals involved with CW (Barth, Lee, & Hodorowicz, 2017; Corcoran, 2003; Hohman, 1998; Forrester, Westlake, & Glynn, 2012; Maxwell, Scourfield, Featherstone, Holland, & Tolman, 2012). In a previous narrative review of MI in CW, Shah and colleagues (2018) found general support for MI. This study aims to build on the work of Shah et al in three ways.…”

“…Some studies in their review included only a small portion of families in CW—for example, only 20% of the sample were CW-involved in Dauber et al (2017). Additionally, some studies included in Shah et al (2018) focused on prevention of maltreatment and excluded families currently involved with CW services (e.g., Silovsky et al, 2011). Thus, this study will build on Shah et al (2018) by focusing exclusively on MI with families in CW.…”

“…Additionally, some studies included in Shah et al (2018) focused on prevention of maltreatment and excluded families currently involved with CW services (e.g., Silovsky et al, 2011). Thus, this study will build on Shah et al (2018) by focusing exclusively on MI with families in CW. A second contribution made by the current study is that it will include a search of unpublished materials and gray literature, whereas Shah and colleagues included only peer-reviewed manuscripts.…”

‘I just want my parenting to be able to be better than what it is’: A qualitative exploration of parenting strengths and needs of mothers experiencing homelessness

“…This theme of children serving as a motivating force for parents and of parents' optimism is fairly common across qualitative studies of parents experiencing homelessness (Andrade et al, 2020). Mothers' optimism and hope for improved circumstances for their children could be the basis for motivational interviewing to ensure engagement prior to addressing difficult challenges such as decisions to leave violent partners or to begin intensive therapy and/or substance abuse treatment (Shah et al, 2017). Second, several mothers expressed difficulties in parenting even while they discussed their deep affection for their child.…”