Context: Despite growing concerns about adapting child protection services (CPS) to the specific needs of minority children and families, scant attention has been paid to the intervention methods practitioners use in their daily work with these families, or how they make decision about these cases. In Canada, research has documented the overrepresentation of minority children in CPS mainly at the entry point (allegations) (Lavergne, Dufour et al. 2008, Lavergne, Dufour et al. 2009). Furthermore, overrepresentation would seem to be countered following the evaluation process, with the majority of cases involving minority children being unsubstantiated and dropped after investigation (Lavergne, Dufour et al. 2009). To date, we have no explanation of the reasons behind this situation. We know that practitioners working with these families need to develop skills to navigate the complexities of intercultural and child protection approaches.
Objective: Evaluation (also referred to as the investigation) is a critical step in the socio-judicial process of CPS. It is crucial to understand how practitioners combine the legal and clinical mandates of the Youth Protection Act (YPA), the imperatives of intercultural intervention, but also other aspects such as personal, deontological and social work values, and the larger sociopolitical context in which racism and discrimination persist. This presentation reports on how professionals make decisions during the evaluation stage, particularly in an intercultural context. This understanding will clarify the experiential knowledge of practitioners, the decision-making process and what influences it during the evaluation of maltreatment allegations regarding minority families.
Methods: This presentation reports on the preliminary findings emerging from the first stage of a Grounded Theory research project that explores decision making processes of child protection workers (N=10) assigned in an evaluation team in Montréal youth protection agency. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with the aim of exploring 1) the clinical processes of the evaluation stage in CPS; 2) the particular challenges of evaluation within an intercultural context; 3) the perception of similarities and differences in the evaluation of situations involving minority families; 4) the role of personal and professional values in the practice of evaluation and 5) the influence of larger social and political contexts on practice.
Results: Themes generated from the analysis of interviews with practitioners uncover the challenges of combining intercultural approaches with the specific mandate of CPS, specifically in relation to risk-management and education regarding the mandate of CPS with certain families. Concerns regarding delays of evaluation, access to resources and lack of basic knowledge about intercultural approaches were also identified as obstacles to evaluation with these families. Analyses also document the importance practitioners give to their personal identity and values in order to support their decisions. The results reveal as well how institutional and social contexts are intertwined in a complex way in shaping daily interventions with minority families in CPS.
Conclusion: Such report has the potential to inform practices and policies to better address the needs of minority families in child protection services. Building on these results and the specificity of the methodology (grounded theory), all relevant issues have been incorporated into a second round of interviews to deepen our understanding and analyses of the evaluation within an intercultural context.
Lavergne, C., et al. (2009). "La réponse du système de protection de la jeunesse montréalais aux enfants issus des minorités visibles." Intervention(131): 233-241.
Lavergne, C., et al. (2008). "Visible Minority, Aboriginal, and Caucasian Children Investigated by Canadian Protective Services." Child Welfare 87(2): 59-76.
Assessment and decision making in child welfare , Migration and minorities in child welfare
