Eligibility or Targeting? Screening Policies As Drivers of Disparate Child Welfare Responses for Black Families

Background and Purpose:

Much of the research on Black families’ disproportional and disparate involvement in child welfare in Canada has documented that they begin at the “front door” of these systems, with rates of screening and investigation consistently exceeding those of white families. The Ontario Child Welfare Eligibility Spectrum (ES) is a screening tool that determines whether reports of actual or potential harm to children should be investigated. Previous research has documented the marked increase in investigations of Black families that coincided with the implementation of the ES in the late 1990s, which introduced and then sustained disproportionate and disparate involvement of Black children, youth, and families, but there is limited understanding of the mechanisms through which the ES impacts decision-making for front-line workers who are screening reports and conducting investigations.

Methods: The overall purpose of the Mapping Disparities for Black Families (MDBF) Project is to understand how anti-Black racism manifests within the system and to identify key areas where disparities emerge, are maintained, and can be meaningfully addressed with substantive policy, organizational, or practice change. Individual and focus group interviews were conducted with 79 participants employed by or adjacent to the Ontario child welfare system (front-line child welfare workers, supervisors, agency leads, equity specialists, and lawyers), focusing on decision-making across the continuum of child welfare involvement. The research team used Interpretive Phenomenology to analyze interview data and to explore how participants experienced their work with Black families, including the dynamics and influences in decision-making. Preliminary analyses were presented to participants, community members, and child welfare professionals to further contextualize the findings and generate recommendations.

Results: Participants in the study had a range of responses to the question of how they thought the ES influenced their practice and decision-making with Black families, which coalesced into three major themes. The first theme focused on participants’ understanding of the ES as driving their practice and the inherent tension between standardization and discretion, including problematic coding practices that reflected the risk tolerance of decision-makers. Participants also described the limitations in the way that the ES was developed and has been operationalized, which contributed to its negative, disproportional, and dehumanizing impacts on Black families and communities. Finally, participants described how they circumvent the ES to buffer those impacts and emphasized the need for substantive change to the policy, including revisions to the ES or abandoning it altogether.

Conclusions: The findings raise concerns about the foundations of key policies that shape child welfare investigative practice and the scope of child welfare intervention with Black families in Ontario. Workers underscored the centrality of the ES to their practice, decision-making, and treatment of Black families investigated and served by child welfare and cited it as a key driver of disparities in involvement and outcomes.