Moving Toward a Forward Looking Accountability in Child Welfare
(2015) FLMU06 20142Division of Risk Management and Societal Safety
- Abstract
- The field of child welfare could be considered one of the most complex social systems to work within. Whether punishing for errors or satisficing calls for accountability with firing employees and pointing to individuals as the root causes of bad outcomes, the current practice in child welfare is to utilize backward looking accountability. It is argued here that child welfare agencies would benefit from a Forward Looking Accountability in order to promote system resilience. This prospective approach forces an organisation to accept its complexity and orient itself towards safety improvement. Furthermore, this paper will provide evidence of barriers that U.S. Child Welfare agencies may face while pursuing a Forward Looking Accountability.... (More)
- The field of child welfare could be considered one of the most complex social systems to work within. Whether punishing for errors or satisficing calls for accountability with firing employees and pointing to individuals as the root causes of bad outcomes, the current practice in child welfare is to utilize backward looking accountability. It is argued here that child welfare agencies would benefit from a Forward Looking Accountability in order to promote system resilience. This prospective approach forces an organisation to accept its complexity and orient itself towards safety improvement. Furthermore, this paper will provide evidence of barriers that U.S. Child Welfare agencies may face while pursuing a Forward Looking Accountability. To achieve this, focus groups were conducted at four different hierarchal levels within the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services. The results of focus groups conducted in this paper were indicative of three predominant barriers that agencies will likely face: pervasive backward looking approaches, bureaucratic demands, and inconsistency within organisational structures. While there are difficulties to overcome the aforementioned barriers, child welfare agencies may benefit from engaging discussion at the top of the organisation while including elected officials and media organisations. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/5148070
- author
- Hengelbrok, Noel LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- FLMU06 20142
- year
- 2015
- type
- H1 - Master's Degree (One Year)
- subject
- keywords
- just culture, resilience engineering, system safety, human factors, social services, child welfare, Accountability, forward looking accountability, second story, second victim, FLMU06
- language
- English
- id
- 5148070
- date added to LUP
- 2015-03-05 15:55:29
- date last changed
- 2016-12-12 13:48:31
@misc{5148070, abstract = {{The field of child welfare could be considered one of the most complex social systems to work within. Whether punishing for errors or satisficing calls for accountability with firing employees and pointing to individuals as the root causes of bad outcomes, the current practice in child welfare is to utilize backward looking accountability. It is argued here that child welfare agencies would benefit from a Forward Looking Accountability in order to promote system resilience. This prospective approach forces an organisation to accept its complexity and orient itself towards safety improvement. Furthermore, this paper will provide evidence of barriers that U.S. Child Welfare agencies may face while pursuing a Forward Looking Accountability. To achieve this, focus groups were conducted at four different hierarchal levels within the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services. The results of focus groups conducted in this paper were indicative of three predominant barriers that agencies will likely face: pervasive backward looking approaches, bureaucratic demands, and inconsistency within organisational structures. While there are difficulties to overcome the aforementioned barriers, child welfare agencies may benefit from engaging discussion at the top of the organisation while including elected officials and media organisations.}}, author = {{Hengelbrok, Noel}}, language = {{eng}}, note = {{Student Paper}}, title = {{Moving Toward a Forward Looking Accountability in Child Welfare}}, year = {{2015}}, }