What is good professional judgment in child protection?
Creators: name: BROADLEY, Karen
Publisher: name: RMIT University
Year: 2024
Subjects: classificationCode: 441099
subject: Sociology not elsewhere classified

description: When I was a child protection worker I always wondered whether I was making good decisions. That thinking eventually turned into the question that is central to this thesis: what constitutes good professional judgment in child protection?

My aim is to answer this question by reflecting on my long practice as a youth worker and child protection worker.  It is a project that produced seven scholarly articles written over the past few years in which I explore what good professional judgment in child protection looks like and how it can be achieved.

I begin by describing why states' requirements that child protection practitioners comply with prescriptive practice manuals and risk assessment tools, can produce serious harm for children, families and even for practitioners themselves.  Although these prescriptive practices conform closely to technical-rational models of professional practice which have been subjected to devastating critique by scholars including Schon (1983) and Flyvbjerg (2001) they continue to be used. They are problematic because they radically reduce the capacity of practitioners to exercise their professional judgment reflectively, a basic requirement if workers are to do their work well.

I turn then to showing how an over-reliance on prescribed modes of practice and decision making, can give rise to 'uncomfortable knowledge' i.e., knowledge that people would rather not have.  For example a practitioner may ignore what a young person in out-of-home care says about his experiences and preferences if what he says does not align with the assessment tools offered by practice manuals based on an arbitrary model about what will be in the clients best interests.  Not only does this silence the voice of the young person which is disempowering and disrespectful to the young person.  It also means that because critical information needed to understand the young person and their context is missing, the practitioner cannot exercise good judgment and make a good decision.

I provide other examples of uncomfortable knowledge that organizations, managers and even researchers turn away from e.g., of abuse in care, client violence against workers, and the complex question about 'what works' in family support services.  Problems like these will never be resolved if they are not acknowledged and properly engaged.

I then ask how can good professional judgement in child protection be understood and achieved.  This is an important question.  Although there is a wealth of literature that highlights problems with technical-rational methods of decision making in child protection - there is little research that suggests how good decisions should be made.

I begin by outlining what reflective practice can contribute to an understanding about what good professional judgment in child protection might look like.  By drawing on Schon's (1983) notion of 'reflection on action' I reflect on my experiences as a child protection practitioner and what I learnt when making decisions e.g., about removing a child from their family.  I also draw from research that reports on and makes visible the decision making processes of child protection practitioners who reflect on their decisions about child removal.  This research is usually based on the use of vignettes or interviewing of child protection workers about their decision making. By reflecting on my own experiences and by reviewing research that reports on other practitioner's experiences, I identify steps practitioners can take as they make these decisions.  I identify the factors that require consideration, the weight they attribute to each factor and why. I then evaluate the appropriateness of their decision making processes based on professional values and empirical knowledge, and develop 12 decision-making criteria that can help guide practitioners to make good decisions about child removal.

I make a case for using Aristotle's virtue ethics to help make good professional judgments in child protection. By borrowing some fundamental insights from Aristotle I explain how good professional judgment in child protection can be achieved in key decision making phases like the intake phase and the 'first home visit'.  I argue that for child protection practitioners, virtue ethics provides a useful ethical framework to draw from because: 

- It helps practitioners identify the end goal of their practice i.e., children's physical, emotional and social safety (which is integral to their flourishing). 
- It emphasises the role of moral virtues in making a good judgment (i.e., empathy, courage, honesty).
- It emphasises the intellectual virtue of phronesis (translated as practical wisdom). This is important because it helps practitioners to judge when and how virtues like honesty, kindness, or courage need to be exercised. Phronesis also helps practitioners identify the 'golden mean'.  (This refers to the idea that good judgment often lies in the mean between two extremes i.e., finding the right balance in different contexts between conflicting interests, needs and rights). 
- It helps prevent practitioners from being rule bound, and encourages them to use their intuition, experience, emotion to inform their decision making.
- It encourages practitioners to value feedback from others, and to engage in reflective practice.
- It also helps practitioners recognise and overcome the problem of uncomfortable knowledge.