Exploring Innovative Methodologies in time and place to analyze child protection documents as elements of practice

This paper aims to demonstrate how a derived approach to case file analysis, influenced by the work of Michel Foucault and Dorothy E.Smith, can offer innovative means by which to study the relations between discourse and practices in child welfare. The article explores text-based forms of organization in histories of child protection in Finland and in Northern Ireland. It is focused on case file records in different organizational child protection contexts in two jurisdictions. Building on a previous article (Author 1 & 2: 2011), we attempt to demonstrate the potential of how the relations between practices and discourses –a majorly important theme for understanding child welfare social work – can be effectively analysed using a combination of two approaches This article is based on three different empirical studies from our two jurisdictions Northern Ireland (UK) and Finland; one study used Foucault; the other Smith and the third study sought to combine the methods. This article seeks to report on ongoing work in developing, for child welfare studies, ‘a history that speaks back’ as we have described it.

Developing Evidence-Based Practice in Child Protection

This article argues for the adoption of an evidence-based approach to decision-making in child protection. Such a change hinges upon the availability of good quality, up-to-date evidence that is readily accessible to practitioners and policy-makers. Following a resume' of the arguments for recognizing controlled trials as methodologically superior to other forms of methodology in evaluating professional interventions, the article presents the case for adopting a similarly rigorous approach to synthesizing research findings. It then identifies a range of obstacles to promoting evidence-based practice and makes recommendations for changes in training, research, and practice which might facilitate improvement in both primary research and in reviews of the literature.

Effectiveness of child protection training for pre-service early childhood educators

International evidence confirms that early childhood educators can enter professional practice unprepared for child protection due to inadequate pre-service preparation. This paper makes an original contribution by using the Child Protection Questionnaire for Educators (CPQE) to examine the pre- and post- intervention child maltreatment and protection knowledge of early childhood and primary teaching students. While students’ knowledge increases significantly after participating in a child protection training programme, Pastoral Pathways, as part of their undergraduate study, post-intervention scores vary between groups. The study provides evidence of programme effectiveness and future training needs of pre-service educators. Findings are relevant to teacher educators and child care training providers in relation to programme content development and evidencing knowledge and skills acquisition.

Child Welfare as Child Protection Then and Now: What Social Workers Did and Continue to Do

The research reported here builds on the work of one of the authors who, some thirteen years ago, in a similar study, examined the potential for social workers to shift from a child protection to a child welfare practice orientation. As with the original research study, this present project seeks to examine the everyday practices of social workers with children and families as revealed by file analysis, vignette questionnaires (reported here) and interviews with families and social workers (to be reported). A twenty-item vignette questionnaire was completed by fifty-five social workers (65.5 per cent response rate). It was found that there was little agreement on coding decisions with regard to which cases should be designated child protection or child welfare. Further analysis revealed that, regardless of such coding decisions, families tended to receive similar responses by social workers. The results demonstrate that, whilst there has been a reduction in the headline numbers of child protection investigations undertaken across Health and Social Care Trusts in Northern Ireland, the everyday patterns of practice with families and children where parenting concerns remain evident reflect child protection risk management priorities and practices. 

Systematically Identifying Relevant Research : Case Study on Child Protection Social workers' Resilience

Context: The development of a consolidated knowledge base for social work requires rigorous approaches to identifying relevant research. Method: The quality of 10 databases and a web search engine were appraised by systematically searching for research articles on resilience and burnout in child protection social workers. Results: Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts, Social Services Abstracts and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) had greatest sensitivity, each retrieving more than double than any other database. PsycINFO and Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health (CINAHL) had highest precision. Google Scholar had modest sensitivity and good precision in relation to the first 100 items. SSCI, Google Scholar, Medline, and CINAHL retrieved the highest number of hits not retrieved by any other database. Conclusion: A range of databases is required for even modestly comprehensive searching. Advanced database searching methods are being developed but the profession requires greater standardization of terminology to assist in information retrieval.