Case file analyses in child protection research: Review of methodological challenges and development of a framework

Witte, Susanne

doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2019.104551

Cited by 12 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 82 publications

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“…Susanne Witte (2020) offers a useful process framework for undertaking retrospective case file analysis. This three-step process involves gathering the information (ensuring access, retrieving the case files, and considering the ethical challenges), processing the information (selecting the variables of interest, handling inconsistences), and presenting the information in a meaningful way.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A novel approach for understanding trauma-related youth violence in low resource contexts: A retrospective case file review in Northern Ireland

Walsh

Doherty²,

Best

2021

Violence: An International Journal

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Adverse life events during childhood have been associated with increased rates of violence. Despite decades of violent conflict, there continues to be a paucity of contextually relevant data related to youth violence in Northern Ireland. Prospective studies are useful but these require time and resources that are not often available. In the absence of such studies, there remains a need to understand the prevalence and impact of serious youth violence in a cost-effective and timely way. The primary aim of this study is to present a novel method for collecting and analyzing violence-related data using existing administrative data through a retrospective case file review of young people aged 10–18 who spent time in custodial services ( n = 145) over a 1-year period (January 2019 to December 2019) in Northern Ireland. A digital worksheet was developed and following a review, data from each file were extracted. Analyses examined the relationship between potentially traumatic life events and violent offending. Consistent with previous studies, this study found that rates of both adversity and violent offending are high. However, not all forms of adversity are associated with the same violent outcomes. Regression models illustrated, for instance, a significant relationship between community-based victimization and violent offending. Those who experienced more serious forms of violence were more likely to engage in higher harm violence. This study adds to the international literature on psychological trauma and youth violence and makes recommendations for future investigation.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A novel approach for understanding trauma-related youth violence in low resource contexts: A retrospective case file review in Northern Ireland

Walsh

Doherty²,

Best

2021

Violence: An International Journal

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“…Gathering information is an interactive process. If the child or parents perceive the investigator as a threat, they may not be as willing to share information (Witte, 2020).…”

Section: The Children's Participation In the Investigation Processmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Child protection investigations are part of case files, which the social workers write for different audiences, such as colleagues, other professionals, superiors, the child, and the family. Most likely, there are multiple audiences of the case files (Witte, 2020).…”

Section: Child Protection and Privatizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Child protection investigations by private consultants or municipally employed social workers: What are the differences for children?

Bergman

Arnesson

Berggren

2022

Journal of Social Work

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Summary In Sweden, a practice has developed where the social services have started to hire private consultants in child protection investigations. This article analyses and compares the handling of child protection investigations carried out by private consultants and municipally employed social workers with regard to the reasons for the reports, the investigations, the assessments, and the decisions taken about interventions. The concepts funnel and filtering and children's participation are used in the analysis. The study has a mixed-methods design, where qualitative and quantitative data and analysis are combined and integrated. Data consists of 120 case files regarding the social service's handling of investigations as well as interviews with managers of social service departments. Findings The results show several differences in the handling of child protection investigations carried out by social workers and private consultants in the municipalities studied. The private consultants worked to a greater extent with investigations that were initiated due to concerns about violence. Investigations conducted by consultants contained less information and specifically concerning children's perspective. These children also received interventions to a lesser extent than children assessed by the municipal social workers. Application The study indicates that from a child’s perspective, it matters whether a municipally employed social worker or a private consultant performs an investigation. Consultants generally work temporarily in a workplace, and it may therefore be more difficult to establish a trusting relationship with the children, which can be a barrier to children's participation and the implementation of a child’s perspective.

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“…However, since we have investigated participation using case file data, it could be argued that we de facto developed a tool that measures the degree in which child protection professionals document participation in their case files. We encountered a large extent of missing participation data, which is a common issue when conducting case file research (Witte 2020). In many instances there was no explicit document on whether certain types of participation occurred.…”

Section: Strengths and Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We have made the assumption that absence of participation descriptions in case files implied that participation did not happen. We need to note that this is a precarious assumption, because it could be that participation was just not recorded in case files (Witte 2020). It can be hypothesized that child protection workers do not report implicit acts or "common sense" decisions, which might include informing children or involving them in decisions.…”

Section: Strengths and Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Participation of Children Involved in the Child Protection System – Validation of the Meaningful Participation Assessment Tool (MPAT)

et al. 2020

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Children have the right to participate in child protection investigations. Although research suggests that participation is related to positive outcomes of children in the child protection system, children’s participation is not always facilitated in practice. Therefore, it is important to validate tools that can be used to further investigate children’s participation. We examined the psychometric properties (i.e., reliability, internal validity, and external validity) of the Meaningful Participation Assessment Tool (MPAT), which measures the degree in which child protection professionals enable children’s participation in child protection investigations. The MPAT is based on the Model of Meaningful Participation (Bouma et al. 2018) and distinguishes three domains of children’s participation in child protection: 1) informing, 2) hearing, and 3) involving in decision-making. It consists of 13 items. We validated the MPAT based on data from 292 child protection cases. We concluded that the MPAT was reliable, internally valid and externally valid. The MPAT’s reliability was reflected by substantial Cohen’s Kappa coefficients ranging from .63 to .92. The Mokken scale analysis revealed a strong scale of 8 items (H = .70, Rho = .89). Items on seeing and hearing children about child protection topics seemed relatively more easy to achieve compared to items on providing children with information, which suggests that child protection workers may struggle most with informing children. Lastly, we concluded that the MPAT might be externally valid because we found higher MPAT scores for subgroups based on child protection institution, age, and gender, which was in line with our expectations.

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Case file analyses in child protection research: Review of methodological challenges and development of a framework

Cited by 12 publications

References 82 publications

A novel approach for understanding trauma-related youth violence in low resource contexts: A retrospective case file review in Northern Ireland

A novel approach for understanding trauma-related youth violence in low resource contexts: A retrospective case file review in Northern Ireland

Child protection investigations by private consultants or municipally employed social workers: What are the differences for children?

Participation of Children Involved in the Child Protection System – Validation of the Meaningful Participation Assessment Tool (MPAT)

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