Britner Preston A, Mossler Daniel G
School of Family Studies, University of Connecticut, Storrs 06269-2058, USA.
Child Abuse Negl. 2002 Apr;26(4):317-32. doi: 10.1016/s0145-2134(02)00311-3.
The goal of this research was to study how different groups of child welfare professionals prioritize and use information to make placement decisions following instances of child abuse.
A total of 90 juvenile court judges and guardians ad litem, Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA), social workers, and mental health professionals responded to a detailed questionnaire describing four case studies of child physical abuse in which a parent was the perpetrator, the child was either 2 years or 6 years of age, and the abuse was either first time or chronic. Participants rated the impact of specific pieces of information regarding child, family, and system-level characteristics on their decision-making process.
Analyses of reactions to these vignettes demonstrate that professional groups use different kinds of information when making decisions about foster care placements. Social workers and mental health providers rely on information about the severity and pattern of abuse and on information about services offered in the past and parental responses to those services. Judges and guardians ad litem rely more heavily on information about the likelihood of a reoccurrence of abuse and the child's ability to recount the abuse, whereas CASA volunteers rely on information about the stability of the family.
Professional group membership, rather than factors such as age or ethnicity of the child or chronicity of abuse, accounts for different patterns of prioritizing and using information when making decisions about whether a child should remain in the home or be placed in foster care. The implications for community-based training and intervention efforts are discussed.
本研究的目的是探讨不同群体的儿童福利专业人员在儿童遭受虐待事件后如何对信息进行优先级排序并利用这些信息做出安置决策。
共有90名少年法庭法官、诉讼监护人、法院指定特别倡导者（CASA）、社会工作者和心理健康专业人员对一份详细问卷做出了回应，该问卷描述了四个儿童身体虐待的案例研究，其中施暴者为父母，儿童年龄为2岁或6岁，虐待行为为首次发生或长期存在。参与者对有关儿童、家庭和系统层面特征的特定信息对其决策过程的影响进行了评分。
对这些案例 vignettes 的反应分析表明，不同专业群体在做出寄养安置决策时使用不同类型的信息。社会工作者和心理健康提供者依赖于有关虐待严重程度和模式的信息，以及过去提供的服务和父母对这些服务的反应的信息。法官和诉讼监护人更依赖于有关虐待再次发生可能性以及儿童讲述虐待情况能力的信息，而CASA志愿者则依赖于有关家庭稳定性的信息。
专业群体成员身份，而非儿童的年龄或种族或虐待的长期性等因素，在决定儿童应留在家中还是被安置在寄养机构时，决定了不同的信息优先级排序和使用模式。文中讨论了对基于社区的培训和干预措施的影响。
