International perspectives on children's participation in child protection agency decision making

Objectives Removal of a child from parental care to public care is a serious state intervention in the private relations of children and their parents. Children, the subject of removal, are sometimes involved in decisions... [ view full abstract ]

Objectives
Removal of a child from parental care to public care is a serious state intervention in the private relations of children and their parents. Children, the subject of removal, are sometimes involved in decisions about their separation, but they are not necessarily engaged as agents of their fate. Some states make explicit through legislation an expectation that children are involved in determining their future; others are silent on children’s participation. And because we know that child protection workers, as street-level bureaucrats (Lipsky, 1980; 2010), sometimes employ wide discretion in their work with families, we do not know whether workers in various state systems are more or less inclusive of children’s voice. This international comparative paper examines how child protection workers in England, Finland, Norway, and the US involve children in decision making regarding involuntary child removal.
Method
This paper draws on findings from an ongoing study of social work and judicial decision-making in child protection cases (2012-16). The study includes a sample of 772 child protection workers who completed an on-line survey including a vignette regarding a case requiring preparations for a care order. Staff were asked a series of questions about how they would involve children in the case. We examine children’s involvement along three dimensions including information given to the child, information gathered from the child, and opportunities for their perspectives and interests to be considered.
Result
Of the total 1020 informants who responded to the survey, 772 had experience with care order proceedings and thus were eligible for inclusion in data analysis for this study. The total numbers of respondents from each country were 367 from Norway, 208 from Finland, 102 from England, and 84 from California. Results indicate that child protection workers weight children’s involvement differently based upon age. Staff in the four countries were more likely to talk with an older child, to provide information, to gather information, and to include in relevant decision making if the child were 11 compared to five in our hypothetical vignette. Although the Nordic countries and England provide policy guidance regarding children’s role in child protection decision making, we did not see consistently higher indicators of children’s involvement from the respondents in these countries. Using welfare-state and child protection system frames to analyse the findings also did not produce consistent differences between the family service systems and child protection systems included in this study.
Conclusion
Findings highlight the wide range in policies and practices concerning children’s involvement in child welfare decision making, despite their formal position as central to all deliberations in some states. The study also highlights the wide space for professional discretion in implementing practice with children at the local level.