You can’t always get what you want... A selective review of studies on child placement and decision-making

Abstract

This paper presents a survey of empirical research that has been performed in the Netherlands over the last fifteen years regarding the out-of-home placement of children with psycho-social problems. Special attention will be paid to the decision-making process of placement agencies. The focus will be on placements in both residential and foster care settings, two care arrangements with approximately the same number of children. It appears that the decision-making process is pragmatic rather than rational. Many bottlenecks arise during the implementation of placement decisions, resulting in the fact that children quite often do not end up in the preferred care arrangements. A drastic reorganization of the access to the Dutch child and youth care services is supposed to improve this situation. The author argues for investigating methods that support the process of decision-making at the micro level resulting, for instance, in an improved anticipation of the risks and setbacks expected in connection with individual placement choices.