Evelyn Khoo

Child Welfare or Child Protection Uncovering Swedish and Canadian Orientations to Social Intervention in Child Maltreatment

This article details our findings from focus groups with social workers in Sweden and Canada illuminating similarities and differences in the process of social intervention in child mal-treatment. We identified six categories that form the bases for hypothesizing different orientations of child welfare and child protection: Gate Keeping; Skills in Context; Client Identity; Decision Points; Compulsion; and Measures. We analysed participants’ descriptions and uncovered how these descriptions of social intervention in child maltreatment connect to model orientations in both countries. In Swedish child welfare, there is a greater readiness to intervene with more resources and measures, intervention is assessment driven and focuses on family preservation. In Canadian child protection, only the most needy children are eligible for a limited range of services, intervention is structure driven and more narrowly focused on protection and permanency planning. The implications of these findings to social work are discussed.

The road to placement breakdown: Foster parents’ experiences of the events surrounding the unexpected ending of a child’s placement in their care

Placement breakdown is a frequently occurring phenomenon in the context of out-of-home care. Although research has pointed to the many problems associated with placement instability and breakdown, less is known about foster parents’ experiences. We carried out deep interviews with foster parents to investigate connections between their caring experiences and experiences of placement breakdown. Results of our study demonstrate that breakdown is a complex process rather than a single event – a process that starts in the discrepancy between the statutory obligations of the social services toward the foster home and the foster parents’ perceptions of the kind if information and support they actually receive from the social services. High demands are placed on foster parents’ ability to provide care and offer a loving home to children who have been raised in difficult environments and who have behaviour problems. The road to breakdown also included a lack of knowledge about the child’s needs, insufficient understanding of the placement process, a difficult relationship with the social worker, and a lack of individualized service with the right supports at the right time. Although the placement may have ended in breakdown, foster parents described a continuing relationship between their families and child which was of lasting significance.

The Travelling Idea of Looking After Children: Conditions for moulding a systematic approach in child welfare into three national contexts—Australia, Canada and Sweden

Abstract Looking After Children (LAC) is an approach (care philosophy and working tools) used to assess the psycho-social development of children being cared for by child welfare agencies. It is an international initiative that was developed in England and then travelled and was translated into other contexts, most notably Australia, Canada and Sweden. This paper presents findings from an open-ended question in a survey distributed to social workers and managers using LAC and “cousin” systems in these countries. We asked respondents what advice they would give to others considering implementing these systems. Our qualitative content analyses showed that, regardless of the context, the 257 respondents gave voice to programmatic/normative arguments, reflecting mainly positive attitudes to the systems. However, managers and social workers voiced different arguments in their favour. Managers voiced normative arguments favouring the underlying principles, whereas social workers from all three countries identified the dual needs to remain flexible and to recognise the limitations of the systems, especially at the operational level. Results offer insights into approaches to change management in different contexts.