Decisions and Systems of Child Welfare: Emerging Steps in the Management of Uncertainty

When children come to the attention of the child welfare system, they become involved in a decision-making continuum. Decisions along the continuum have an increasingly significant effect on the future well-being of children,... [ view full abstract ]

When children come to the attention of the child welfare system, they become involved in a decision-making continuum. Decisions along the continuum have an increasingly significant effect on the future well-being of children, yet many of these decision occur under conditions of uncertainty. The decision to remove children from their families have particularly uncertain consequences, yet other decisions such as those related to reunification and adoption are equally uncertain with regard to the lifelong consequences on children and families.
An understanding of statistical decision-making errors is viewed through this lens, providing a context and a process for understanding child protection decision-making. The lynch pin is the idea of thresholds for taking action. The Decision-Making Ecology (DME) represents an effort to advance our understanding of Child Welfare decision-making using the knowledge gained from the decision sciences. It is a theoretical framework for organizing decision-making research in Child Welfare and places the topic squarely in the context of actual protective-service operations in this field. The systemic context for decision-making includes a set of decision- making influences that include case, external, organizational, and individual factors that combine in various ways to influence decisions and outcomes. The influence of these factors are expressed through the actions of individual decision makers. The DME is intended to guide an understanding of both the context and process of decision-making, the goal of which is to predict “behavioral thresholds for action”.
This presentation focuses on the development, testing, and application of the DME. The model will be described and its implications will be underscored. A central argument is that the theory makes important contributions to Child Welfare because it enhances both prediction and understanding. A theory like the DME is also useful in helping to set and to clarify the research agenda and design of studies. Examples such as how the model has been successfully applied to the problem of disproportionality (e.g., Baumann et. al., 2010; Fluke, et. al., 2010; Rivaux, et. al., 2008), and the decision to place children into care (e.g., Graham, Fluke Baumann and Detlaff, 2015), will be briefly described. The presentation will then turn to examples of how the research infrastructure for the DME framework is being applied in the domain of implementation science.