156P
Safety Assessment and Placement Decisions in Cases of Ambiguous Risk of Children from Low-SES Families: Associations to the Child's Personal Factors
Method: A hybrid experimental-design factorial-survey describing low-SES families with ambiguous-risk-to-child was administered to 120 child-welfare social-workers in Israel. Previously validated vignettes examined the role of child’s gender, family's-religiosity (ultra-orthodox vs. secular), and ethnic origin (Majority=Ashkenazi vs. Minority=Mizrahi). Participants were asked to assess the level of risk to the child and whether they would recommend out-of-home placement. Analyses were conducted at the vignette level, controlling for the within-subject-clustering using robust logistic regression withn a generalized estimating equations (GEE) framework.
Results: Risk assessment was significantly higher for boys compared to girls. Risk assessment was also higher for children from ultra-religious families compared to children from secular families and for children from minority-families compared to children from majority-families. Furthermore, the highest risk assessment was attributed to ultra-religious boys and to minority-boys. However, while more out-of-home recommendations were given for boys compared to girls, out-of-home recommendation was not associated with the child’s religiosity or ethnic origin.
Implications: The results suggest that in ambiguous-risk cases of children from low-SES families the social workers tend to perceive child’s male-gender as a risk factor in and of itself, a risk factor that may interact with other personal factors such as the family’s religiosity and ethnic origin. Such biases may demonstrate a heuristic process that influences the professional judgment. Various clinical implications are suggested in order to reduce the impact of heuristics processes in social work decision making in cases of ambiguous risk for children.