Adoption and permanence planning in Scotland: Impact of the Adoption and Children (Scotland) Act 2007 on key processes and timescales

Adoption and permanence planning has been a key feature of Scotland's policy in relation to children and young people who are “looked after.” Although policy and law has significantly developed in recent years, there has been comparatively little research on permanence processes in Scotland. This paper outlines key findings from the first comprehensive study of permanence planning in Scotland. It examines the process for two cohorts of children where adoption or other types of permanence orders were made. The children were selected under the long standing Adoption (Scotland) Act 1978 and the more recent Adoption and Children (Scotland) Act 2007. In total, 300 cases were examined, analysing data from the children's first contact with services through to the order made by the Scottish Courts. This paper pays particular attention to the timescales found at key stages under the two sets of legislation and asks what difference the change in legislation has made.     

Collaboration and conversations with children in Child Welfare Services —Parents' viewpoint

Collaboration and conversations are important in meeting vulnerable children's needs in the context of Child Welfare Services (CWS). Building on 10 qualitative interviews with parents of children in Norwegian Child Welfare Services, this paper discusses parents' views on collaboration between children and child welfare professionals. The parents stated that a constructive collaborative relationship depends on professionals' attitudes towards the child, their ability to connect with the child and their awareness of how the child's emotions and how the parents influence the child–professional relationship. A collaborative relationship is essential for child welfare professionals to meet the child's needs and to help improve relations between the child and the parents. The parents asked for more collaboration between children and child welfare professionals. The findings call for more discussion of child welfare workers' tasks and competence.     

Child protection practitioners: Including children in decision making

This article presents findings from a study with 467 child protection practitioners in Australia to determine their practice responses and views on children's participation. The practitioners, recruited from 5 state jurisdictions, completed an online survey responding to case studies designed to determine the extent to which they would seek and include children's perspectives in decision making, and their confidence in talking to children. We report on practitioners' responses to a case study of a 5‐year‐old girl with suspicious bruising where the mother reports domestic violence. Based on previous research, it was hypothesized that the child's young age would lead to low levels of confidence in consulting with the child and giving weight to her perspective. In contrast to the findings of other research, our results show that almost all workers report that they would speak with the child, would be confident doing so, and would give weight to the child's perspective. Our discussion explores the potential reasons for the difference in these findings compared with other research, including the experience of practitioners, increased child‐centred policy in Australia, multiple understandings of participation, and variation in children and practitioner views of participation.     

The impact of parental incarceration on children's care: identifying good practice principles from the perspective of imprisoned primary carer parents

Parental incarceration has wide‐ranging impacts on families. One key effect may be disruption to the care and legal custody of children, yet few studies have examined processes and outcomes relating to care planning for children of prisoners. This paper presents findings of interviews with 151 primary carer prisoners in two Australian states which aimed to address this research gap. The study examined care planning for children upon parental arrest, sentencing and imprisonment, stability of care arrangements and primary carer prisoners' involvement and satisfaction with care planning. Around one third of prisoners had discussions regarding children's care arrangements at arrest and imprisonment, although the issue was more commonly raised at sentencing. While there was much variation in the stability of care arrangements, children placed in out‐of‐home care experienced the most instability. A minority of prisoners reported being involved in care planning and decision‐making for children upon imprisonment, and around one third rated care planning process poorly. Prisoners were more satisfied with care planning when there were fewer movements of children, where prisoners felt involved with decision‐making, and when police officers, lawyers and corrections staff inquired about the welfare of their children. Implications for policy and future research are discussed.     

Organizational factors and child participation in decision‐making: differences between two child welfare organizations

Children in residential care tend to be less content with the quality of care arrangements and participation opportunities compared to children in foster care. This study explored possible differences in social workers' views about child participation and service quality. Hierarchical regression analyses were used to test if any differences may be explained by collaboration between professionals' and social workers' work engagement. We found that social workers from residential care services seem more prudent in letting children participate in case planning compared to social workers planning for foster care. Social workers' judgements of service quality were also highly affected by their organizational affiliation, but personal factors such as work engagement may also play a part. The differences we found regarding social workers' attitudes towards participation and their rating of service quality are associated with organizational culture. Understanding how organizations shape social workers' decisions to include or exclude children in care planning may help gain a more comprehensive understanding of what is needed to take the participation agenda forward.     

Children's agency in interprofessional collaborative meetings in child welfare work

The concept of children's agency can be used to understand how children actively shape their lives. While in social work there is a growing body of research on how children experience meetings that involve collaborating professionals, little is known about the ways in which they exert an influence. The purpose of the study is, in a Swedish context, to investigate children's perceptions of their agentic capacity in regulating participation and exerting an influence on outcomes in interprofessional collaborative meetings. Interviews were carried out with 28 children in receipt of social services support. Findings revealed that children perceive professionals' talk as restricting opportunities for input. They also perceive that they have the capacity to exercise agency by (i) conforming to expectations by feigning boredom and seeming disengaged, but at the same time paying close attention; (ii) by using exit strategies; and (iii) by developing ‘in‐situ’ strategies to end meetings. Rather than, as previously suggested, being powerless in such circumstances, the children tell how they carefully assess situations, and, from a position of apparent subordination, talk of ways of acting that reveal their agentic capacity. These insights are of importance for practitioners who are encouraged to look beyond behaviours that first meet the eye.     

Parents' involvement in care order decisions: a cross‐country study of front‐line practice

This article examines parents' involvement in care order decision‐making in four countries at one particular point in the care order process, namely, when the child protection worker discusses with the parents his or her considerations regarding child removal. The countries represent different child welfare systems with Norway and Finland categorized as ‘family service systems’ and the USA as a ‘child protection system’, with England somewhere in between. The focus is on whether the forms and intensity of involvement are different in these four countries and whether the system orientation towards family services or child protection influences practice in the social welfare agencies with parents. Involvement is studied in terms of providing information to parents, collecting information from parents and ensuring inclusion in the decision‐making processes. A vignette method is employed in a survey with 768 responses from child protection workers in four countries. The findings do not show a consistent pattern of difference regarding parental involvement in care order preparations that align with the type of child welfare system in which staff work. The goal in each child welfare system is to include parents, but the precise ways in which it is carried out (or not) vary. Methodological suggestions are given for further studies.     

Mother‐to‐Child Transmission of HIV in China and the USA: A Comparative Analysis

This paper analyzes and compares the existing policies and programs for the prevention of mother‐to‐child transmission of HIV existing in China and in the USA. The implementation of these is still imperfect and there needs to be improvements in the education (the spreading of information) and in the general health care system of China. Particular attention will be drawn to the existing barriers to the effective implementation of prevention of mother‐to‐child‐transmission. The recommendations aim to solve similar barriers in both countries and some specifically dealing with problems in China. Since HIV infection in children is caused almost entirely by prenatal transmission, it is important that the governments, in partnership with civic society organizations, make all the necessary efforts to save the lives of their newborn citizens.     

The documented layer of children's rights in care order decision‐making

The recognition of children as rights holders is a true challenge for any policy and practice that involves children, but it is even more so for making decisions about taking children into care. This article departs from the view that when children are perceived as bearers of rights, this should also be reflected in the institutional documents of decision‐making. That is why the documented layer of decisions about taking a child into care is examined here. The empirical data consist of documents of hearings (prehearing and hearing reports) in which children (33) are asked to give their view about a proposed care order and placement in Finland. The documented layers of involving children as rights holders are divided into two types: a minimalist type and a more individualised, thorough and detailed type. The former type represents children as rights holders in a routinised manner, whereas the latter one treats them in a particularised manner: how this particular child in this particular hearing received and gave information and on what grounds her/his view rested. As the documents may have some controversial implications, the recording of children as rights holders should not be treated as an isolated and technical issue.     

The Holocaust Survivor in Late Life

No abstract available for this article.     

Navigations between regulations and gut instinct: the unveiling of collective memory in decision‐making processes where teenagers are placed in residential care

The decision to take a young person away from his or her family into out‐of‐home care and treatment is the most drastic intervention within the statutory powers bestowed upon social services. The results of reports on the quality of residential treatment reveal that state supervision has not proven to be a good substitute for parental care. In this paper we analyse the decision‐making process when young persons are placed in residential care. Focus groups and individual interviews with different stakeholders were conducted. The results show that the placements are a collective process involving negotiations between the different parties with a coordinating social worker in the middle, with the aim to bring something to build hope on in often desperate situations, regardless of the specific treatment method used. To inform the process, the social workers draw on a ‘collective memory’ shared among colleagues in the department. Important signs of quality of a residential unit were the relational and collaborative competence from the staff. The inclination to use soft, diffuse information in decision‐making shows a striking lack of evidence upon which social workers can build well‐informed and knowledge‐based decisions.     

Accepting and Negotiating Service Users' Choices in Mental Health Transition Meetings

Across Western welfare regimes, policies emphasize that service users should have more choices regarding their services. This article examines how service choices are presented, responded to and decided in interactions between service users and professionals in mental health transition meetings. Choice is often associated with consumerist user involvement ideas, but in mental health choice also relates to the democratic user involvement approach and to shared decision making between professionals and service users. The results of the study show that professionals construct service users as consumers by offering service options in choice making sequences, expecting users to make appropriate choices. Service users mostly act like consumers by responding to these choice options. However, the study also demonstrates that the professionals do not always accept the user's first choice but respond to them as non‐preferred. Sometimes, they also suggest choices on behalf of the users. In these ‘non‐accepting’ sequences, choices are negotiated in interaction between the parties, rather than users acting as autonomous choice makers. The sequences are based on two kinds of professional reasoning: first, the professional‐led needs assessment and, second, the structure of the service package that the user is being offered. This negotiation has elements of shared decision making and the ‘logic of care’. But it also has elements of paternalist control which challenge both consumerist and democratic service user involvement and suggests consideration of more collectively oriented service user actions.     

The value and rationale of gender‐specific intervention with at‐risk adolescent girls

Gender‐specific intervention (GSI) with at‐risk adolescent girls (ARAGs) is highly prevalent in Israel and elsewhere; professionals commonly consider GSI to be beneficial for ARAGs. However, despite the popularity of such programmes, there is little empirical support for their effectiveness and almost no critical examination of their theoretical rationale. The aim of this qualitative, naturalistic study was to explore how experienced professionals in this domain perceive the value and rationale of GSI with ARAGs, based on in‐depth, semistructured interviews with 15 female Israeli professionals. All of the interviewees claimed that overall, GSI is the “right” or most effective way to work with ARAGs. The discussion reviews the empirical support for participants' assumptions regarding the value of GSI for ARAGs and critically considers the potential drawbacks of GSI with ARAGs.     

Child Well‐Being Scales (CWBS) in the assessment of families and children in home‐care intervention: an empirical study

This paper reports research carried out in Italy designed to investigate the usability of Child Well‐Being Scale (CWBS) for the outcome evaluation of home‐care interventions for vulnerable families and children in need. Using a pre‐ and post‐test design, the study traces the changes in 18 vulnerable families and 23 children in need included in a programme of home‐care intervention over a period of 11 months. All the families and children were assessed twice: at intake and at the end of the intervention (after 6 months). Furthermore, 10 families and 11 children had a longer intervention and were assessed three times. Moreover, two focus groups involving 13 home‐care workers and 11 face‐to‐face interviews were used to collect practitioners' points of views on CWBS. The results generally support the idea that families' and children's situation improved over time, as shown by an improvement in almost all of the considered dimensions after 6 months and after 11 months. Specifically, the families improved more on household adequacy in the long term while children on the child performance dimension improved in the short term. Practitioners reported that CWBS was an aid to multi‐professional decision‐making, as the systematic evaluation of the subscales was a practical base upon which to activate shared decision‐making during the casework.     

Exploring Potential 'Extra-Familial' Child Homicide Assailants in the UK and Estimating their Homicide Rate: Perception of Risk--The Need for Debate

High-profile child murders lead parents to fear for their children’ssafety, but perception of risk is often at variance with reality.We explore the numbers of potential ‘Extra-familial’child homicide assailants in the United Kingdom and estimatetheir actual murder rate to determine risk levels. A South ofEngland study, equivalent to a 4 per cent sample of the UK population,of a decade of consecutive child homicides identified the characteristicsof child homicide assailants, finding that the most frequentassailants—the ‘Intra-familial’—werevery different from ‘Extra-familial’ assailants.‘Extra-familial’ killers were all males, aged nineteento forty-two, with convictions for Violent-Multi-Criminal-Child-Sex-Abuse(VMCCSA) offences and Multi-Criminal-Child-Sex-Abuse (MCCSA),whose victims were aged seven-plus years. Projecting these characteristicsonto the male UK population enables us to estimate the numbersof potential UK ‘Extra-familial’ assailants, whichare set against known UK child (five to fourteen) homicides(WHO, 2005). To account for any ‘hidden’ child homicides,deaths in the ‘undetermined’ violent death category,designated ‘Other External Cause’ (OEC), are calculatedto provide a ‘maximum’ child homicide rate. Therewere potentially 912 VMCCSA and 886 MCCSA ‘Extra-familial’offenders in the United Kingdom, who could be responsible forthe WHO-reported UK three-year average of ‘Extra-family’fifteen child homicide and seventeen OEC deaths per annum; ahomicide rate of 12,061 per million (pm) for VMCCSA and 3,386pm for MCSA, which is 1.21 and 0.34 per cent; however, the VMCCSAhomicide rate was 403 times greater than the all children accidentand cancer death rates. Though the vast majority of these potentialassailants did not kill, comparatively, they are extremely dangerous.Practice and ethical issues are debated, which considers activeoutreach for the ‘treatable’ to possible ‘reviewable’custodial sentences for the VMCCSA.     

An exploratory study of the impact of an adolescent's eating disorder on Chinese parents' well‐being,marital life and perceived family functioning in Shenzhen,China: implications for social work practice

In this paper, the author reports the results of an exploratory study conducted in Shenzhen, China on how an eating disorder in an adolescent or adult child in the family would affect the parents' well‐being, quality of marital life and the perceived family functioning. Out of 33 patients suffering from eating disorders and referred for family treatment, 18 mothers and 15 fathers participated in this study. The data were gathered using a standardized questionnaire comprising three measures, namely the Symptom Check‐List‐90‐R, the Dyadic Adjustment Scale and the Family Assessment Device. The results of the study have shown that the parents' well‐being was negatively affected, especially for the mothers, whose self‐reported depression and anxiety levels were higher than the fathers'. The parents also perceived family functioning to be less satisfactory since the onset of the disorder, with least satisfaction reported on Affective Involvement, Affective Responsiveness, Roles and Behaviour Control. However, the onset had no negative effect on the parents' marital life. Implications of the study for social work practice are discussed.     

Substance use and decision‐making in adolescent best friendship dyads: The role of popularity

In adolescent best friendship dyads, we examined: (a) similarity in substance use and decision‐making; (b) associations between participants' decision‐making and their own and best friend's substance use, (c) the influence of relative popularity within the dyad on these associations. Participants (n = 172; 12–18 years) named their best friend, completed popularity ratings, and a substance use questionnaire. Computer tasks were administered to assess risk‐taking and immediate reward preferences. Reciprocated same‐sex best friendship dyads (n = 49) were distinguished on their popularity, and we controlled for age differences between dyads in the analyses. Best friends were similar in substance use and risk‐taking preferences. More popular friends' risk‐taking preferences were positively associated with alcohol use of less popular friends. These findings underscore best friendship similarity in risky behaviors, and the influence of popular friends.     

Children in immediate danger: Emergency removals in Finnish and Irish child protection

This paper presents a qualitative analysis of front‐line practices regarding emergency removals in Finnish and Irish child protection. It examines how the responses to children's immediate danger are framed by legislation and how front‐line practitioners assess the child's situation and make emergency placement decisions. The data consist of interviews with 16 Irish and 33 Finnish social workers. These child welfare protection systems respond differently to a task that appears to be similar. The Irish team‐based practice rests on the social workers' shared assessment of the child's needs, and the formal decision is made by the courts (or police officers at night‐time); and the Finnish practice involves only one single social worker who makes both the assessment and the removal decision. The Irish system is tightly time regulated, whereas the Finnish system provides a more flexible time frame. Both approaches put a lot of stress on social workers' practice, which also includes creative workarounds (e.g., “planned emergency removals” in Finland). Future research will need to explore these features from the point of view of a child's right to protection.     

Risk Management Paradigms in Health and Social Services for Professional Decision Making on the Long-Term Care of Older People

Risk management systems and structures are developing rapidlywithin UK health and personal social services. However, therisk management strategies of organizations need to take intoaccount the conceptual frameworks used by professionals. Thisgrounded theory study used data from nineteen focus groups andnine semi-structured interviews (ninety-nine staff in total)to explore perspectives on risk and decision-making regardingthe long-term care of older people. Focus group participantsand interviewees comprised social workers, care managers, consultantgeriatricians, general medical practitioners, community nurses,occupational therapists, home care managers and hospital dischargesupport staff. Social work and health care professionals conceptualizedrisk and its management according to six paradigms that appearedto be in a state of reciprocal tension: (i) Identifying andMeeting Needs; (ii) Minimizing Situational Hazards; (iii) Protectingthis Individual and Others; (iv) Balancing Benefits and Harms;(v) Accounting for Resources and Priorities; and (vi) Warinessof Lurking Conflicts. The effective translation into practiceof risk management strategies needs to address the complex andoften contradictory issues facing health and social servicesprofessionals.