Child welfare organizations: Does structure impact who gets ongoing services?

Objective: This study examined the impact of the structure of child welfare organizations on the decision to provide ongoing services. The Decision Making Ecology Framework (Baumann, Dalgleish, Fluke & Kern, 2011) was used as... [ view full abstract ]

Objective:
This study examined the impact of the structure of child welfare organizations on the decision to provide ongoing services. The Decision Making Ecology Framework (Baumann, Dalgleish, Fluke & Kern, 2011) was used as the foundation for the development of a multi-level logistic regression model to test the influence of organizational and case level factors. Structural factors included worker specialization and service integration.
Method:
Secondary data analysis of the Ontario Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect – 2013 (Fallon et al., 2015) was conducted to examine the relative influence of case and organizational level variables on the decision to provide ongoing services. A subsample of 4,949 investigations from 16 agencies was included in this study.
Results:
Specialization and service integration did not predict ongoing service provision in the final models, although variance was found at the organizational level that remains unexplained. Case factors, including: child age, children and caregivers with functioning concerns, type of maltreatment, cases involving emotional or physical harm, previous involvement in child welfare, families that have experienced household moves and financial issues all lead to an increased likelihood of receiving ongoing services.
Conclusion:
Based on an examination of the variance at the organizational level, it is clear that organizational factors impact decision making, but the nature of this impact remains unexplained. Perhaps other organizational factors not included in this study would explain this variance. Future research should include examining the impact of organizational factors on the long-term outcomes of children involved in the child welfare system. As changes to organizations are occurring, well designed longitudinal studies are needed that can test the impact of such changes.