Factors Influencing Social Workers' Judgement and Decision Making in Child Protection: Substantive and Methodological Implications of a Systematic Literature Search and Synthesis

Background: Judgement and decision making (JDM) of social workers in child protection services is influenced both by factors associated with the case and with the contexts of decision making (e.g. characteristics of the... [ view full abstract ]

Background:
Judgement and decision making (JDM) of social workers in child protection services is influenced both by factors associated with the case and with the contexts of decision making (e.g. characteristics of the practitioner, agency, policy context). Previous literature reviews on social workers' JDM in child protection have focused primarily on a specific national child welfare context (e.g. Platt/Turney 2014, on the UK) or addressed other issues than factors influencing JDM (e.g. Taylor/Killick 2013).

Aim:
This paper aims to present substantive and methodological implications of a systematic search and synthesis of qualitative and quantitative studies addressing factors influencing social workers' judgement and decision making (JDM) on child endangerment (e.g. risk of significant harm) and related interventions. It will 1) give an overview on the modelling of factors influencing the social workers' JDM, objects/situation of the JDM, characteristics of the sample, methods and methodological approaches, 2) discuss the substantive implications, 3) discuss relations between methods, (national) configurations of child protection and findings, 4) discuss issues of translating findings to (national and local) contexts that are different to those of their origin.

Methods:
Bibliographic databases were systematically searched for empirical studies on JDM in child protection services. The quantitative and qualitative studies were selected based on pre-defined inclusion and exclusion criteria. The main criteria are: Publications on empirical research, be published from 1990 in English or German language, focusing factors influencing child protection service workers' JDM on child endangerment and/or related interventions. The references of the found studies were hand searched for further studies matching the criteria. The found publications will be synthetized based on a narrative synthesis approach (cf. Popay et al. 2006).