Justifying out-of-home placement: A multiple case study of decision-making in child welfare and protection services

Abstract

The study to be presented here analyzes the social workers' decision processes in 16 typical cases concerning out-of-home placement of children aged 0 to 7. Former research has primarily focused on why this is suggested. Researchers have so far shown much less interest in how these decisions are developed, which was the aim of this study. Decision processes are understood as information processing in three stages: selecting relevant information, constructing professional arguments, and matching case and law. It was supposed that the justificatory arguments would either be organized around one salient case characteristic, or through combining and weighing several attributes. It appeared that when severe substance abuse on the part of the parents was documented, this became the salient case characteristic, and was used as a trump card. In the other cases, a puzzle was constructed consisting of several attributes none of which was sufficient in itself. Implications are discussed.