Child welfare professionals regularly make crucial decisions that have a significant impact on children and their families. The present study presents the Judgments and Decision Processes in Context model (JUDPIC) and uses it to examine the relationships between three independent domains: case characteristic (mother's wish with regard to removal), practitioner characteristic (child welfare attitudes), and protective system context (four countries: Israel, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland and Spain); and three dependent factors: substantiation of maltreatment, risk assessment, and intervention recommendation. The sample consisted of 828 practitioners from four countries. Participants were presented with a vignette of a case of alleged child maltreatment and were asked to determine whether maltreatment was substantiated, assess risk and recommend an intervention using structured instruments. Participants' child welfare attitudes were assessed. The case characteristic of mother's wish with regard to removal had no impact on judgments and decisions. In contrast, practitioners' child welfare attitudes were associated with substantiation, risk assessments and recommendations. There were significant country differences on most measures. The findings support most of the predictions derived from the JUDPIC model. The significant differences between practitioners from different countries underscore the importance of context in child protection decision making. Training should enhance practitioners' awareness of the impact that their attitudes and the context in which they are embedded have on their judgments and decisions.

This article reports findings from the third part of a three-part research project examining the potential for social workers to shift from a child protection to a child welfare orientation in their practice. Whilst social workers in the UK have been encouraged to make such changes, they have been hampered by concerns to manage risk. Findings reported from the earlier parts of the project, indicated that there was potential for a substantial proportion of child protection work to be redesignated as child welfare work, but that where this was achieved in practice, there was evidence of the continued influence of child protection processes as social workers sought to manage the risks inherent in child welfare cases. The study reported here sets out to ascertain the views of parents who were subject to child welfare interventions. The findings indicate that while parents feel apprehension with regard to contact with social workers, in the majority of cases successful relationships are formed. It is argued that social workers display considerable skill in monitoring potential risks whilst engaging with families and that the subtleties involved in such activity are not captured by official measures of governance which concentrate on more abstract indicators of performance.

This article reports the findings of the second part of a two‐part research project examining the potential for social workers to make changes in their work with families and children. Whilst social workers in the United Kingdom have been encouraged to shift from a child protection to a child welfare orientation in their practice, such changes have been hampered by professional and organizational concern to manage risk. The research explores the influence of a child protection orientation on practice in child welfare cases. The findings, from two file analyses and interviews with 26 social workers, indicate that such an influence is indeed apparent. This is evidenced in two ways; first patterns of practice in child welfare cases are similar to those in child protection cases. Secondly, while the majority of social workers express an attitudinal desire to move towards a child welfare orientation, they still prioritize the management of risk in their practice. It is argued that social workers need permission from their employing organizations to make changes in their practice. This, in turn, requires such organizations to state clear goals in line with a child welfare orientation and develop holistic strategies to achieve these.

In the United Kingdom there has been difficulty in implementing the family support provisions contained in the 1989 Children Act, largely because of continued emphasis on child protection activity by local authorities. There is an observable international tendency for child-care referrals to receive investigative response, resulting in families being traumatized and children's needs left unmet. There has been a lack of research into how child-care referrals are initially categorized by senior social workers. This paper reports on research undertaken in two Health and Social Services Trusts within Northern Ireland to ascertain if it might be possible to treat more initial referrals as 'child-care problem enquiries' as opposed to 'child protection investigations'. Results demonstrate that, while such potential may exist, a preoccupation with the management of risk could lead to the development of child-care problems receiving quasi-child protection responses. Consequently, changes in initial decision making may not have the full intended effects in terms of the organizational release of resources for family support or a lessening of the traumatic impact upon families.

This paper is part of a series published by the Multiple Adverse Childhood Experiences research group based at Queen's University Belfast. First-year undergraduates took part in an online survey, self-reporting on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) and measures of social service contact. The ten-item ACE questionnaire measures abuse, neglect and household dysfunction (current sample α = 0.711). The study achieved a response rate of 18.6 per cent (N = 765; 552 (72.7 per cent) females and 212 (27.2 per cent) males, 21.8 per cent reporting having been educated at a ‘Protestant’ school, 42 per cent reporting having been educated at a ‘Catholic’ school and 20.4 per cent reporting previous school religious affiliation as ‘other’). Despite obvious non-response bias, ACE scores for this student population are comparable with college-educated populations in the USA. Current respondents with previous social service contact are over twenty-three times more likely than peers to have experienced multiple adversities. Findings support the hypothesis that social service contact, alone, acts as a proxy indicator for the presence of multiple adverse childhood experiences, with no significant elevation in ACE scores for those going through court proceedings or subject to child protection registration. This study supports current concerns by policy makers to target those children experiencing multiple adversities.