This approach is not the same for all Western countries. This report describes the situation across five countries: Nett, J., & Spratt, T. (2012). Child protection systems: An international comparison of ‘good practice examples’ of five countries (Australia, Germany, Finland, Sweden, United Kingdom) with recommendations for Switzerland: Fonds Suisse pour des projets de protection de l’enfance.

There is a trend towards 'child and family sensitive policy and practice' in Alcohol and Other Drugs services, here is a resource on that:

http://nceta.flinders.edu.au/files/3913/0915/8536/EN435%20Battams%20et%20al%202010%20.pdf

The practice of child protection seems to be ideologically driven more than based on evidence. Australia's practices vary across the various jurisdictions with limited consistency between them. The complaints from parents seems to be similar across various state and national borders especially there has been a risk assessment based on poor information.

Hi Brian- In New Zealand the child welfare law requires consultation with families, inlcuding the use of family group conferences for decision making. Ultimately the saftey of the child must be paramount but it does mean that extended family are included and at the table for support and input.

I also wanted to say that it is extremely difficult for child protection services to get it right when there is so much media and political pressure to take children into care for failure to conform- the latest is the moral panic on childhood obesity, where families are being reported for what is essentially a wicked set of environmental and socioeconomic cocktail of circumstances.

There have been some innovative practices to come out of NZ in social policy. I am familiar with how family conferencing has had an impact in Juvenile Justice. Some are very impressed with how child protection is viewed in NZ. It would be better if child protection was viewed in other ways other than questions of law.

The problem with stats is that those in the human services often lack the capacity to understand what is given to them, let alone the ability to explain to a third party what the implications are.

Very few understand the difference between causality and coincidence. This definitely applies in the area of child protection in Australia when case files are examined.

I don't agree with the assumptions in the question. Protecting children is REALLY hard. For 25 years, I have seen child protection service systems in the U.S. working mighty hard to both protect children AND keep families together. This becomes easier when using risk assessment instruments such as Structured Decision Making--but it's still difficult and an inexact science, to put it mildly.

Most families have risk factors. The difference between risk and safety is important. Safety is of immediate concern. Risk factors are issues that could become safety factors in the future. If safety factors can be controlled then the child does not need to be removed. Risk factors can be addressed with intact family services. 

I agree wtih Michael! Structured decision making--for instance--assesses Risk and Protective factors. Even a family with high risk factors may have protective factors that increase child safety. 

Brian - one of the problems with child protection services in Australia is that most of the workers are not qualified social workers, which means that they lack both the skills and knowledge to work with families to improve parenting - see attached article.

The SDM tools don't help much either, see http://repository.unimelb.edu.au/10187/4337. 

And second attached article.

You might also be interested in

Gillingham, P. (2014) Driving child protection reform: Evidence or ideology? Australian Social Work, 67, 3, 377-389.

Brian, what is your basis to say that risk assessment has resulted in more children taken into care? It's curious to me because at least for actuarial risk assessment in the Structured Decision Making  (SDM) system, results of a risk assessment are explicitly de-coupled from the placement decision. When you say risk assessment, you also lump together quite a few different approaches. Which risk assessments have been shown to increase children in placement? Thank you.

And Phillip, as you have heard from us, your examination of Queensland is very helpful in identifying implementation considerations. You do seem to conflate implementation with the properties of the decision support tools themselves. I would ask readers of your work to carefully tease these out. Implementation is vital, without a doubt, and we find your analysis helpful to the extent that it warns of the danger of insufficient attention to implementation. Decision support tools should be evaluated based on reliability, validity, equity and utility. You could claim that you speak to the utility question. Readers evaluating SDM tools per se would be well served to seek additional reading, such as Johnson, Clancy & Bastian. "Child abuse/neglect risk assessment under field practice conditions: Tests of external and temporal validity and comparison with hear disease prediction." Children and Youth Services Review. 56(2015)76-85.

Raelene,obviously I would claim that my research spoke to the utility of the tools, but another matter arose in the discussion I had with your colleagues some time ago. This was that it is not just about implementation, but who they are being implemented with. Most of the practitioners in Queensland are not qualified social workers and so have no professional expertise to complement any tool, which is going to undermine utility.  From my analysis of the policy documents, there was a strong sense that the SDM tools were introduced to compensate for a lack of expertise. The discussion prompted me, along the way, to write this article:

Gillingham, P. (2015) Social work and child protection in Australia: Whose job is it anyway? Practice: Social Work in Action. Published online 17 July 2015. DOI:10.1080/09503153.2015.1074670

Part of assessing risk is also assessing deception, which is quite difficult.

Hi Phillip,

We appear to be in agreement that child protection should be done by qualified, well-trained professional staff. I would be happy to join voices with you in calls for that and in opposing steps to save dollars by putting in folks who have not had the benefit of education or experience.

We have chosen to not walk away from systems that are staffed by folks without the desired education and experience. It may be that this de-professionalization is sometimes undertaken out of disregard for the work, we find many places needing to hire less educated/experienced staff because of a scarcity of available MSWs or similar. While we can advocate, we can't control . AND in situations that some or most of a workforce has less education or experience, we find that the structure of SDM can help to speed the learning curve, and can help as a coaching, supervision and CQI tool. Granted, it's not always used that way, and I would love to think together of ways to help avoid the unintentional use of SDM as a false sense of security that colludes with long term de-professionalization.

Hi Phillip,

We appear to be in agreement that child protection should be done by qualified, well-trained professional staff. I would be happy to join voices with you in calls for that and in opposing steps to save dollars by putting in folks who have not had the benefit of education or experience.

We have chosen to not walk away from systems that are staffed by folks without the desired education and experience. It may be that this de-professionalization is sometimes undertaken out of disregard for the work, we find many places needing to hire less educated/experienced staff because of a scarcity of available MSWs or similar. While we can advocate, we can't control . AND in situations that some or most of a workforce has less education or experience, we find that the structure of SDM can help to speed the learning curve, and can help as a coaching, supervision and CQI tool. Granted, it's not always used that way, and I would love to think together of ways to help avoid the unintentional use of SDM as a false sense of security that colludes with long term de-professionalization.

I think the deprofessionalisation of child protection is due to public agencies wanting to save money, of course, and also that agencies that provide child protection who do not hire workers with master's-level degrees have seen success.  I think child protection should be an academic discipline now. Especially in light of increasing domestic terrorism, and the rising normalization of child abuse worldwide.

In grappling with the media Heat due to child fatalities, agencies have a tendency to grab onto opposites.  If there are too many fatalities with Masters level Child Protection practitioners, then the agencies will reach toward those service providers without professional degrees. In my opinion, there must be more added to the SDM concerning sociopathy. In most of the cases that I have studied including Peter Connelly and Victoria Climbié, the common factor with each of them were sociopathic caregivers. How does the SDM account for them?

Hi Colette,

Each jurisdiction's SDM may be a bit different, but they would have something along these lines:

A key concept in SDM is that there is a decision support tool designed specifically for each key decision point. For example, on the question of whether or not to remove a child, SDM uses a safety assessment. Most safety assessments grew out of the work of Barry Salovitz in New York in the 19080s. With this tool, the first question is whether or not there is imminent danger of severe harm. (if so, something must be done to address the danger immediately. This may be an in home safety plan or a placement, based on subsequent parts of the tool). There are typically around 10 categories of things that workers scan for. One of these items typically relates to whether or not a caregiver's mental health (or some other) issues are creating imminent danger. This is the first place where actions of a sociopathic parent could be picked up it they are at that level.

Next, most actuarial risk assessments have included an item related to parent mental health, so risk level would likely be higher.

Next, case planning begins with a comprehensive strength and needs assessment which would explore mental health issues. If there is information that a parent has some aspect of sociopathy that would surface as something to address in case planning.

So, essentially, at each point there is something to trigger awareness of, and capturing of sociopathy. As Phillip points out, there is professional awareness needed here as well. These triggers aren't limited to sociopathy per se, and you wont find a "sociopathy" item labeled that specifically.

Among the vast majority of families in the CPS system where there is not a fatality (or even near fatality), sociopathy would not be as dominant as it sounds like you are finding among fatalities. Let me know if this is responsive to your question. Which jurisdiction SDM systems have you looked at?

Hi Raelene.  I now speak specifically about that "professional awareness" that is not as developed as it should be.  

Knowing that many sociopathic caregivers are very able to suppress what we might consider risk, and that those high profile fatality cases I referenced  had multi-agency involvement that were somehow unable to see the risk either, it seems the SDM must also consider the gut feeling when the assessment items are not so evident.  The tools we have are reliant upon tangible, visible items.  But as we know, child protection is not always about what you can see.  What those children's cases were missing is an assessment system inclusive of intangibles within time, space, and place.  The SDM (which is a great tool) cannot help us assess "that thing," that auspicious moment we know is there, but cannot yet see.  You know, those things hidden in plain sight?  Sometimes what we see is not what is, especially when we are addressing a master of stage-managing and the presentation of self.  House looks clean? Check.  Family is engaging well?  Check.  Children interact in a positive manner with the caregivers and each other?  Check. Last risk level is moderate? Check.  But all along, we are being watched to lean what is acceptable so they can keep the detention away... and the abuse flourishing.

Granted, this is not every family, but those who presented the most insidious cases had workers who realized too late that the caregiver was a real sociopath.  Those are the cases that can stump the SDM.  With all of the wonderful tools we have in place now, what is missing in my opinion is training in recognizing deception in-the-moment.  Perhaps more importantly is to understand the "Schrodinger's cat" nature of the home/placement within that infinitesimal slice of time we have, whenever we do a home call or abuse/neglect investigation.  We as practitioners are being called to rely more on the tool than our own practice wisdom and judgment.  I believe tools and practitioner agency are inseparable; however, in light of avoiding media heat and unwanted attention, I find agencies relying more on tools that ignore the aspect of gut feeling, or kairochoric, eidetic intuiting.  To not incorporate intuition in tools like the SDM is to only, statistically, tell half the story.  Yes, we get the ability to add our comments, but I don't think our words actually become part of the tool's outcome rubric, and are not truncated into the tool.  

As you know,  many social workers rely on their intuition, and it is systematically becoming a practice taboo.

Brian: here's something about "The use of such approaches has more a basis in religious zeal concerning the need to punish parents who are not conforming to class and gender stereotypes."  Many in the African American community believe it is Biblically sound to chastise their children by whipping them with a belt (getting a whooping).  "He who spares his rod hates his son" (Proverbs 13:24) or  "Do not withhold correction from a child, For if you beat him with a rod, he will not die." (Proverbs 23:13).  Both of those translations come from older versions of the Bible; but there are people who believe it is absolutely correct to adhere to that translation.

This kind of physical discipline can lead to cuts, marks, and bruises, and calls to Child Protection Hotlines for a physical abuse allegation.  In that case, many feel it is a parent's right to exercise their religious beliefs to use a rod  (i.e. a "switch" or a "belt" or a shoe) to inflict pain upon their children as a means of correction from error.  I have investigated many of those.  It then becomes a dichotomy of the law's "proper way" to utilize age appropriate physical discipline vs. a parent's religious right to use... tools, for lack of a better word.

Hi Collette, I would love to meet you and have conversation! I appreciate your thoughtfulness. And I agree with you completely! It is as important for workers to be skilled in a.) content of important areas (you mention sociopathy, all forms of mental health, substance use, interpersonal violence, child development, commercially and sexually exploited children, the list of content information child protection workers need is extensive. and b.) interviewing and observational skills.

We have been recently teaching use of SDM tools in the context of practice skills rather than teaching the tools separately. This helps some, but as you may know, classroom training alone won't move the dial much. There has to be coaching and supervision to help embed new skills.

I'm a fan of Daniel Kahneman's book, "Thinking, Fast and Slow." It's a very accessible overview of the concepts of having both intuitive and analytical approaches to thinking available to us. Neither he or I would ever argue that we should ignore intuitive thinking. A frame that I've found useful it to think about what is at stake for particular decisions. When the stakes are high (i.e. whethr a child needs to be removed), we need to employ BOTH. The SDM tool represents our analytic thinking. We also need to hear our intuitive voice. If the two are in conflict, we need to sort out why. Is there vital information we don't have? Is there something that has been operating on a subconscious level for us and we need to bring it forward and sort it? The key is to not ignore this dissonance.

SDM accounts for this in the inclusion of overrides to decisions. We just need to articulate what the intuitive voice was saying, and be able to persuade one other person (i.e. supervisor) that the intuitive voice is the more accurate.

In some places, this intuitive/analytic balance is used very effectively. Without doubt, some places avoid overrides (usually compliance or fear-based organization cultures). Some places use overrides without careful consideration of why the intuitive and analytic voices differed, and are quick to reject the "checklist". (And undoubtedly some skirt the issue by following intuitive voice alone, and "fudging" the decision support tool to align!)

Supporting every worker to effectively balance intuitive and analytic (i.e. SDM) thinking in every instance is a task that will not be "finished" one day, but it is a very important element in work that should continue.