The Child Welfare Practice Model: Implications for Florida's Structured Decision-Making Model

Purpose: Child welfare professionals make decisions regarding the type and egregiousness of the maltreatment and the services needed for families and children. These decisions can have far-reaching consequences, including increased instability, fear, or anxiety and family disruption. Child welfare professionals rely on heuristic decision-making to simplify information. Heuristic decisions increase the risk of biases. Structured decision-making models (SDM) have led to increased rates of permanency for reunified children and decreased rates of repeated maltreatment incidences. The Practice Model, adopted in Florida, encourages child welfare professionals to consider the dynamics and functioning of the family and utilizes a safety tool to aid in identifying home environments as “safe,” no danger threats or danger threats managed sufficiently by caregiver or “unsafe,” danger threats are present and caregivers insufficiently manage the danger threats. This study examined the relationship between safety decisions and removal decisions of case managers in Florida based on race and family structure.

 

Methods: A non-probability convenience sample, targeting case managers (N = 54), was employed. The study design was a 2x2 experimental vignette methodology: White, two-parent; Black, two-parent; White, single-parent; Black, single-parent.

 

Results: Nearly 75% of the sample indicated in-home services recommendation, while 52% of the sample selected “unsafe” as the safety decision, a conflicting result based on the practice model. A significant relationship between safety decisions and removal decisions ( = 7.341, p < .05) occurred, with 11.5% of respondents indicating out-of-home services with a “safe” decision and 64.3% of respondents indicating in-home services with an “unsafe” decision. There was a medium effect size (φ = .254, p = .062) in the relationship between family structure and removal decision. The mediating effect of safety decision resulted in over a .50 probability of receiving an out-of-home services recommendation for children said to be from single-parent families when the safety decision was safe (O.R. = .180, p < .05). A mediating effect of safety decision resulted in over a .99 probability of receiving an out-of-home services recommendation, for respondents who viewed the White, single-parent vignette when the safety decision was safe (O.R. = 2.394, p < .05).

 

Implications for practice: Using structured decision-making models should enhance the quality and consistency of decisions. The results, however, indicate that there may be some inconsistencies in how the practice model is being used. While a large proportion of the sample indicated in-home services, an expected outcome, nearly half of the respondents who selected in-home services had indicated the home environment was unsafe. This was not an expected outcome. The practice model stipulates that the safety outcome should correlate with the removal recommendations with a “safe” outcome resulting in in-home services recommendations and an “unsafe” outcome resulting in out-of-home services recommendations. These results may indicate a need for changes to the Florida Practice Model, including an examination of how it is currently being used, a better understanding of the relationship between removal and safety decisions, and an incorporation of training on how individual biases and heuristic decision-making can lead to biases in services.