Purpose: This qualitative study explores converging and diverging perspectives of child welfare professionals and battered women involved in the public child welfare system about characteristics of public child welfare professionals that facilitate or impede the process of developing collaborative relationship between battered women and their child welfare professionals.

Methods: The data were gathered through in-depth, semi-structured individual interviews with 17 battered women involved in the public child welfare system and 20 public child welfare professionals (supervisors, follow-up workers, and investigators). The verbatim transcriptions of these interviews were analyzed using Grounded Theory data analysis techniques: 1) open coding of line by line analysis to identify categories and sub-categories of themes; 2) axial coding to conceptualize data into categories and identify patterns and relationships among themes; and 3) the constant comparison method of comparing data across mothers, across professionals, and between mothers and professionals to identify the consistency and ranges in perspectives as well as the converging and diverging perspectives.

Results: The data from mothers and professionals revealed both converging and diverging perspectives on professional and interpersonal skills. Among several professional case management skills, the strongest converging perspective between mothers and professionals was found to be diligent provision of concrete and emotional support and accessibility (“doing stuff and being there for me”). Both mother and professionals agreed that when child protective workers actively engage in providing extra help, such as lending their own truck or making visits over the weekends, mothers appreciated and collaborated with the system. The strongest diverging perspective between mothers and professionals was found to be diligent monitoring. Professionals emphasized the importance of constant and diligent monitoring of domestic violence involved cases to prevent further violence in the home, while only few mothers mentioned its helpfulness in their reunification process. Professional skills also included workers' knowledge and experiences, assessment and data collection skills, which both mothers and professionals mentioned as helpful. Interpersonal qualities included communicating consequences with clients which was the strongest diverging perspective between professionals and mothers since mothers perceived it as a threat while professionals perceived it as being honest and actively disclosing information. Interpersonal aspects also included having nonjudgmental attitudes; being respectful but at the same time being able to confront when needed; and being firm, persistent, and patient, which both mothers and professionals agreed as being helpful in developing collaborative and trusting relationships.

Implications: Findings give us a better understanding of the nature of difficulties in establishing collaborative helping relationships between battered women and the public child welfare professionals and suggest strategies for effective and efficient interventions for families who have experienced domestic violence.