Objectives
In recent years there has been an ongoing discussion regarding risk reduction technologies versus discretion as a human oriented judgment drawing upon administrative systems and different professional and systematic methods. Several countries have developed different frameworks to help and facilitate practitioners to make assessments.
In Norway, the term “traditional approach” is often used to describe the assessment work done by case-workers. The term is of the authors understood as a combination of regulations by law, guidelines for interventions and deadlines, certain national principles, knowledge of psychology, different municipalities’ decisions of how to make assessments, different methods, ethics and discretion.
Since 2007 a template “Kvello-malen” has been developed as an electronic template and implemented in about 60 % of the Norwegian Child Welfare services. The purpose is to help case- workers in child welfare services to improve assessment practice and systematize their work.
Two main questions in our study were: 1) is it possible to discover a difference in how utilizing of a standardized template or not influences the case-workers’ assessments, and 2) does it make a difference when it comes to final decisions?
Method
To gain knowledge of the case-workers´ working process related to transition of a referral and the initial work in an investigation, we chose focus group interview as a method. The sample consists of six focus groups with a total of 36 child welfare case-workers. These 36 case-workers were working in three different municipalities in three different cities in Norway. Each service is represented by two focus groups. One service had implemented the template. The population of the municipality and service that has implemented the template is 125,000 people.
The two services that had not implemented the template had been trained in how to use it, but had not implemented the template as a standardized mapping-tool in their service. Their population consisted of 46,000 and 37,000 inhabitants, respectively.
The case-workers were asked to assess the information given as a regular referral. They were first presented a vignette (case 1) constructed as a first referral. This vignette was constructed for the purpose of this study, and the study is descriptive in terms of looking at how professional social workers make decisions in the real world of practice. The case-workers in all six focus groups were instructed to carry out assessments as they usually do when they receive a referral. They were also asked to give a signal when they considered their discussion as completed.
After a short break, they were presented a new vignette (case 2) containing more information about the same children as in case 1, but with a summary of the first conversations with the family.
Results
An intention was to avoid a discussion of “what is the best approach.” Our objective was to eventually locate and consider strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches. Based on the assessments of the vignette in the study, we found that the assessment process, in terms of traditional or standardized approach, was different in several areas. The caseworkers who assessed the referral in terms of a specific template, discussed according to stages of the template as a framework and a structure. The caseworkers who assessed according to a traditional approach carried out their discussions characterized as sequences of fragmented decisions. However, interestingly, the final conclusion regarding the children involved, turned out to be quite similar in all six groups.
Conclusion
The results of our study indicate that there are pros and cons regarding both approaches. Our conclusion from the present study points towards the importance of a combination of a consciousness standardization and an awareness of professional discretion.
