Multiprofessional work in child protection in Portugal: what can maximize positive results? - Communication between child protection professionals and decisions about parenting: what makes an information relevant enough?

Objectives : Each step of intervention process in child protection implies a decision and professionals must exchange information with each other in order to support their reports and recommendations. However this isn’t a... [ view full abstract ]

Objectives : Each step of intervention process in child protection implies a decision and professionals must exchange information with each other in order to support their reports and recommendations. However this isn’t a linear process. In this paper, based on results of the reliability exploratory study of  portuguese validation of  Parenting Capacities Evaluation Guide (De Rancourt, Paquette, Paquette & Rainville, 2006, adapt. Pereira & Alarcão, 2013), we’ll reflect about criteria professionals use to decide what is/isn’t relevant  to share with and consider from others. We’ll also point out the implications of the results for  multi professional work. Method : The exploratory reliability study was developed through the participation of child protection workers,  that used the  Guide to evaluate parenting capacity in 13 cases  of parents of children, aged 0 to 5 years, looked after in Temporary Shelters. Each case was evaluated by three different evaluators . Inter-rater agreement was calculated and reasons for disagreement were qualitatively analised.  Results: The results showed a high level of agreement between the evaluators, and the content analysis of  reasons given for disagreement in the different Guide dimensions showed that professionals  communicate mostly about observations and  not about intervention processes and decided about the relevance of the information based on criteria such as confidence  and how similar it is with his/her own experience. Conclusions: This research points out that features of communication between professionals could be a main factor to understand and improve the decision making process. Agencies should assure conditions to keep professional narratives open to new information, providing time, space, and confidence in communication. Some practical suggestions will be given.