"This is Your Pilot Speaking!" Establishing the methodology for a prospective longitudinal study of risk assessment and decision making, for short and long-term outcomes in child protection and welfare cases

Background: In the Irish child protection system, Initial Assessments are conducted when it is established that there are unresolved concerns regarding a child’s safety or welfare. Initial Assessments are carried out using... [ view full abstract ]

Background:
In the Irish child protection system, Initial Assessments are conducted when it is established that there are unresolved concerns regarding a child’s safety or welfare. Initial Assessments are carried out using structured decision support tools and are concerned with risk and needs assessment. To date there has been no specific research on decision-making during Initial Assessments in Ireland or the outcomes of these assessments.

A research project was established to determine how factors that inform risk assessment and decision making during Initial Assessment, are associated with outcomes at 12 months and annually thereafter. The research is being conducted in nine child protection and welfare social work departments, in the southern region of Ireland, which serve approximately one quarter of the child population of Ireland.

A pilot study was established to examine methodological, practical and ethical aspects of this mixed methods, multi-phase, prospective, longitudinal research project.

Methods:
The pilot study involved 46 cases of children aged 0-18, which had completed Initial Assessment in the latter six months of 2015; and Principal Social Workers, Team Leaders and two teams involved in the management of these cases. Participants were advised that the pilot study would determine the future of the proposed research.

Demographic data, assessment and decision data were manually extracted from Referral Forms, Intake and Initial Assessment Records (these are both decision support tools and business records).

Analytic methods included Thematic Analysis; transformation of qualitative data to quantitative data and descriptive quantitative analysis methods. Data was analysed using SPSS and Nvivo.

Findings: The paper will describe which aspects of the methodology were deemed appropriate and outline reasons for modifications where they were required. Findings indicate that stakeholders are engaged; data collection methods require modification; proposed research methodology requires modification, as the nature of data relating to assessment and judgments recorded did not readily lend itself to the statistical analysis foreseen. The pilot provided a good opportunity for training.

Two groups of qualitative themes were developed during the pilot project. The first group relates the characteristics of the assessment and judgment process: these themes are Cooperation and Imposition. The second group relates to the nature of the decision making by the social worker; these are Enforcement, Subsidiarity or NFA. These themes will inform analysis in the main study.

The study is progressing using thematic analysis, rigorous content analysis for data transformation and various quantitative analysis techniques.

Acknowledgements: The research is supported by funding from the Irish Research Council under the Employment Based Postgraduate Programme and approved by the Social Research Ethics Committee at University College Cork.