How is parental substance misuse associated with child protection threshold decisions made by social workers? The findings of a retrospective cohort study

Parental substance misuse is a significant child welfare issue across the globe. There is an extensive body of research detailing the deleterious impact that parental substance misuse can have upon children’s physical,... [ view full abstract ]

Parental substance misuse is a significant child welfare issue across the globe. There is an extensive body of research detailing the deleterious impact that parental substance misuse can have upon children’s physical, emotional and developmental wellbeing. However the particular risk that parental substance misuse presents to children can be obscured by its co-morbidity and interaction with other important risk factors. This paper explores how child protection threshold decisions made by social workers are associated with parental substance misuse vis-à-vis other risk and protective factors.

A retrospective cohort study was undertaken using clinical data mining to extract information from 200 social work case files of an English rural local authority. At the point of data collection, children were assigned to one of two cohorts; a cohort of children exposed to parental substance misuse and a cohort who were not. Data was collected regarding parental substance misuse, the child’s case pathway and risk and protective factors in the child’s life. Data was analysed via bivariate and multivariate statistical analysis.

Drawing on this study, the paper presents three findings relating to threshold decisions. Firstly, and in contrast to extant research, parental substance misuse was not observed to have a significant impact on threshold decisions. Possible reasons for this are the rural location of the study and the under-estimation of the risk of parental alcohol misuse on children. Secondly, a small group of risk factors had significant predictive effect over threshold decisions. Finally, there was evidence to suggest that reasoning devices employed by social workers were significant factors in relation to threshold decisions. The paper will conclude by describing how key substantive and methodological questions arising from the study have been incorporated into the presenters on-going PhD research. The paper primarily contributes to the conference sub-theme of: ‘Research and evaluation of social work practice’.