Child Welfare Decision Making in Context Part 1- An Exploration in Four Parts

Marleen Wessels

University of Groningen, faculty of behavioural and social sciences, department of special needs education and youth care

As a PhD student at the University of Groningen, Marleen Wessels is conducting research on child welfare, in particular child abuse and neglect. She is involved in project Hestia: an international project on child protection policies and responses in three countries: Germany, England and the Netherlands. The project consists of three studies: a policy analysis, a case file analysis with regard to child protection investigations and interviews with parents who have been involved in a child protection investigation. Her PhD project focusses on decision- making in the Dutch child protection system.  

John Fluke

Kempe Center, University of Colorado School of Medicine

Dr. Fluke, PhD, is an Professor at the Kempe Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Abuse and Neglect at the University of Colorado Denver. He has more than 30 years of experience in social service delivery system research in the areas of child welfare and children’s mental health services. He is internationally recognized for research in assessing and analyzing decision making in human services delivery systems, frameworks to scale up evidence-based practice, and for his innovative and informative research in the areas of administrative data analysis, workload and costing, and performance measurement for child welfare.

Mónica López López

University of Groningen

Mónica López, PhD, is Assistant Professor and Rosalind Franklin Fellow at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, where the focus of her interest is the decision making processes in Child Welfare, and the voice of the service users, children and families, as a powerful instrument to improve service delivery. For the last 10 years, she has been actively seeking the way to improve the child protection system through research: she has studied the outcomes of foster care, the reasons of placement breakdown, the patterns of family reunification of out-of-home children, and the cause of long stays in residential care.

Hans Grietens

University of Groningen

Dr. Grietens is conducting research on child welfare, in particular foster care and child abuse. He has a particular interest in qualitative research methods.His work focuses on: 1) the foster care experience through the eyes of (alumni) foster children, 2) caring for foster children with a history of sexual abuse and complex trauma, 3) matching foster children with foster families, 4) mental health needs of out-of-home placed children and young people, and 5) historical child (sexual) abuse in care.He is project leader of project Hestia. This project is funded by Norface and is on policies and responses towards child abuse and neglect in three countries: Germany, England and the Netherlands.

Scottye Cash

The Ohio State University

Dr. Cash is an Associate Professor of Social Work at The Ohio State University who specializes in child welfare research with a specific emphasis on safety and risk assessment, family assessment, linking services to family needs, family preservation services, managed care and child welfare services, and substance abuse in child welfare families. Dr. Cash was the Principal Investigator on a mixed method evaluation of the state of Ohio’s Comprehensive Assessment and Planning Model—Interim Solution. She has also served as co-Principal Investigator on an Administration on Children and Families grant and as an external consultant with Boys Town helping design the In-Home Family Services program and the Foster Family Services program. Dr. Cash is committed to finding ways to establish partnerships with agencies, supervisors, and front-line staff, with a primary goal of finding ways to bridge the gap between research and practice.

Carrie Smith

Kings University College

Dr. Carrie Smith is an Assistant Professor at King’s University College at Western University, Canada. Dr. Smith worked in child welfare for ten years, as a child protection worker and a supervisor of research and evaluation. Her research and evaluation interests include the structure of child welfare organizations, decision making, evaluations of child welfare programs, evidence informed practice and the ethical collection of data. She has published in the areas of child maltreatment, including supporting new workers, duty to report, evidence-informed practice and ethical considerations for collecting data from vulnerable children. 

Abstract

Objective: This is the first pf two symposium that will present insights from seven research teams that are conducting decision making research informed by theoretical frameworks such as the Decision Making Ecology (Fluke,... [ view full abstract ]

Authors

  1. Cora Bartelinnk (Netherlands Youth Institute)
  2. Marleen Wessels (University of Groningen, faculty of behavioural and social sciences, department of special needs education and youth care)
  3. John Fluke (Kempe Center, University of Colorado School of Medicine)
  4. Joel Gautschi (University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland)
  5. Mónica López López (University of Groningen)
  6. Hans Grietens (University of Groningen)
  7. Scottye Cash (The Ohio State University)
  8. Carrie Smith (Kings University College)

Topic Area

Child Protection Systems and Strategies at local, national and international levels

Session

Symposia13 » Session 1-Child Protection Systems (11:00 - Tuesday, 3rd October, Europe 2 Room)

Presentation Files

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