The prerequisites and practice of audit – a study on the monitoring of out-of-home care for children in Sweden

Objectives: When child welfare authorities place children in out-of-home care, society takes on a specific responsibility for children concerned and for the environment in which they reside. Demands for “more audit” of... [ view full abstract ]

Objectives: When child welfare authorities place children in out-of-home care, society takes on a specific responsibility for children concerned and for the environment in which they reside. Demands for “more audit” of out-of-home care for children have been raised in the public debate as well as within the professional field of social work. The evolvement of an enhanced audit apparatus – in Sweden as well as in other countries - can be understood as the societal response to such non-professional and professional requests. The objective of the presented study is to analyse the nature of this apparatus in Sweden.
Research questions: Who are the actors undertaking different monitoring activities and what different objects are ascribed significance? How do the monitoring systems manage the fact that auditees differ in terms of being on one hand residential homes in the form of private enterprises and public authorities and on the other hand foster homes (with legitimate claims of integrity) ?
Method: data was collected by case files from inspections (n=147) observations (n=10) and interviews (n=8) with professionals in the state inspection authority, interviews with residential staff (n=55) and with professionals in child welfare agencies (n=7). A national survey was sent to child welfare authorities (n=261).
Results: Monitoring of residential care is operated by a national inspection authority. The study indicates that the inspection process has foremost impacted the administrative part of care and that the standard-setting increasingly replaces professional judgement with formal authority. Regulatory standards target aspects of care that are other than those linked to evidence-based practice and they seem to some extent challenge the possibility to organize care according to individual needs of children. The inspection process is guided by different inspectorial rationales, which in turn influence the importance children’s opinions are assigned in the inspection process. Our findings also point at difficulties in giving children’s views substantial impact in the inspection process and that most standards used by the inspection authority, diverge from the aspects of care that children attach most importance to.
The operational monitoring of foster care is delegated to municipal child welfare agencies. These agencies constitute the sole actor that can be assumed to have an insight in the conditions of children in foster care. The monitoring of this service distorts common notions of the relation between the state and the family. Monitoring of children in foster care, is in most municipalities a specialized and highly prioritized task. In the monitoring process children are put in a central position as the ones who should be able to tell about the conditions in the foster home. Strong emphasize is put on creating continuous and personal relations to children, but there are obstacles in terms of or organizational changes, lack of time and staff turnover. Even if older children may have a central and active role when maltreatment is disclose, the study show a complex picture of the many routes the information from a child may travel before it reaches child welfare authorities.
Conclusions: The audit of residential care and foster homes builds on separate logics, which in turn are linked to the fact that foster care is based on families, while residential homes are organizations governed by formal rules. The different logics entail different focus for the audit process and how it is carried out. In both cases children are acknowledged as important actors, but there are substantial difficulties in making conditions of children in out-of-home care visible.