Interpreting children’s best interests: Needs, attachment and decision-making

Abstract

Many decisions in the child welfare arena revolve around the concept of 'children's best interests', but determining what they actually consist of is contestable and subject to conflicting criteria. This article describes the content of 'children's best interests' discourses used by social workers and parents as part of decision-making rationales.Findings: This study found that the construction of children's 'best interests' was underpinned by concepts related to children's needs. Needs were framed as emotional needs best met by family relationships, and theorised primarily using attachment theory. This resulted in decisions that tended to favour stability over change, as children's distress on separation, indiscriminate affection, and difficult behaviours were interpreted as evidence of attachment problems that should lead to decisions to retain stable caregiving arrangements. The use of attachment theory was not straightforward, and illustrates the uneasy juxtapositions of conflicting discourses impacting on child welfare decision-making, particularly the influence of policy orientation.Applications: These conflicts highlight the contested child welfare domain, and the contextualised interpretations required of attachment theories in decision-making contexts in order to make sound decisions for specific children. Implications for practice and education are discussed.

A Context‐Informed Perspective of Child Risk and Protection: Deconstructing Myths in the Risk Discourse

“…A prominent example might be attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969), which was formulated based on empirical research and clinical experience conducted largely in Western countries and is now seen as a universal theory of child development. As such, attachment serves as a central lens through which social workers and child protection officers assess risk and make decisions in cases of alleged child maltreatment, in Israel as well as in other Western countries (e.g., Keddell, 2017; Skivenes & Skramstad, 2013). Attachment theory as a fundamental premise for risk assessment can result in an intense focus on a particular form of parenting (or a deficit thereof) as the main source of emotional safety or a cause of children's problems, rather than being the outcome of complex interrelationships between individual, family, and contextual issues such as cultural values, poverty, political violence, unemployment and discrimination, and available services (Taylor, 2004).…”

Local translations of a universal concept: ‘Child Perspective’ in Swedish social assistance

“…Characteristic for street-level bureaucrats is that they function as mediators between policy and practice, which in concrete terms means that they enjoy discretion in applying legislative principles to individual circumstances. Studies exploring SA as well as other domains of social work show that professionals may have subjective and differing ideas about what applying the child perspective or a child-centric approach actually entails (Jensen Bruheim, Studsrod, & Ellingsten, 2019;Kedell, 2017). The overall picture is that children are rarely treated as social actors and that professionals may have difficulties maintaining a child focus while simultaneously working with parents (Eriksson, 2012;Jensen Bruheim et al, 2019;Kaldal, Landberg, Eriksson, & Svedin, 2016;Kedell, 2017).…”

Algorithmic Justice in Child Protection: Statistical Fairness, Social Justice and the Implications for Practice

“…They note that "the literature on the governance of sociotechnical problems has similarly emphasised the intractability of 'unstructured' or 'semi-structured' problems where there is a lack of consensus around appropriate means and/or ends, and how participatory processes that open up rather than close down are required to socially reach more navigable issues" (p. 5). It would be difficult to find a social policy area with less consensus than child protection, where competing ideologies relating to the proper role of the state in family life, cultural considerations, and children's rights, needs and 'best interests' concepts are diverse and contested (Keddell 2017;Gilbert et al 2011).…”