Social Work - Theses
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ItemThe use of assessment tools in child protection: an ethnomethodological study( 2009)This research focused on how child protection practitioners in the Department of Child Safety, Queensland used the Structured Decision Making (SDM) tools in their practice with children and families. SDM is a set of tools designed to assist practitioners with their decision making, promote consistency in practice and target the children most in need of a service. This research focused on how practitioners used four of the SDM tools in the intake and investigation stages of a case: the Screening Criteria (used to assess which cases should be accepted for investigation), the Response Priority Tool (used to assess the urgency with which an investigation should commence), the Safety Assessment Tool (used to assess whether a Safety Plan needs to be developed or a child needs to be removed from parental care) and the Family Risk Evaluation Tool (used to assign levels of risk to cases and assist in decision making about further Departmental intervention). More broadly, the research aimed to address a gap in the literature about how child protection practitioners use risk assessment tools in their practice with children and families. Theoretically the research drew from ethnomethodology to explore the ‘unstated conditions’ (Garfinkel, 1967) in relation to how the tools were used by practitioners. Methods for data collection were drawn from ethnography and involved three months fieldwork at six Child Safety Service Centres in Queensland during 2007/08. The fieldwork involved observing the practice of practitioners in intake and investigation teams at the different offices, interviews with 46 practitioners and audits of 51 case files. A significant finding of the research was that practitioners were not using the tools in the way that they were intended to be used by their designers (primarily to assist decision making). Rather the tools were considered as tools that met organisational requirements for accountability and consistency. The ‘unstated conditions’ that emerged from the research provide not only description about how the tools were used, but also explanation about why the tools were used in certain ways. These explanations provide insights which have implications more generally for the future development and implementation of tools to assist practitioners with assessment and decision making.