Local Rationality and Frontline Child Welfare Workers’ Decision Making
(2021) FLMU16 20211Division of Risk Management and Societal Safety
- Abstract
- Decisions made by child welfare workers continue throughout the life of a case. Information is constantly being gathered and coming in from a variety of sources which can complicate the decision-making process. Child welfare agencies can benefit from understanding how child welfare workers make decisions and if certain interventions like the concepts from safety science can help increase the information gathered to support decision making. This paper studied frontline workers and supervisors from Minnesota’s child welfare system to determine if the concepts that are used in safety science like that of local rationality impacted how child welfare frontline workers and supervisors made decisions and engaged with a family. Frontline child... (More)
- Decisions made by child welfare workers continue throughout the life of a case. Information is constantly being gathered and coming in from a variety of sources which can complicate the decision-making process. Child welfare agencies can benefit from understanding how child welfare workers make decisions and if certain interventions like the concepts from safety science can help increase the information gathered to support decision making. This paper studied frontline workers and supervisors from Minnesota’s child welfare system to determine if the concepts that are used in safety science like that of local rationality impacted how child welfare frontline workers and supervisors made decisions and engaged with a family. Frontline child welfare workers and supervisors were interviewed about a case study to understand how they make decisions and the strategies that they use to inform decision making. The results of the interviews showed that frontline workers’ and supervisors’ own local rationality can play a role in supporting safety decisions and that local rationality varied amongst the participants depending on their focus of attention, knowledge and experiences and the goals that they were trying to achieve. This study also found that frontline workers’ and supervisors’ use their local rationality more readily when making decisions than tools and polices that are aimed to guide decision making and child welfare agencies may benefit from exploring this further. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9053341
- author
- Melsek, Casey LU
- supervisor
-
- James Nyce LU
- organization
- course
- FLMU16 20211
- year
- 2021
- type
- H1 - Master's Degree (One Year)
- subject
- keywords
- child welfare, local rationality, safety science, FLMU06
- language
- English
- id
- 9053341
- date added to LUP
- 2021-06-14 08:54:32
- date last changed
- 2021-06-14 08:54:32
@misc{9053341,
abstract = {{Decisions made by child welfare workers continue throughout the life of a case. Information is constantly being gathered and coming in from a variety of sources which can complicate the decision-making process. Child welfare agencies can benefit from understanding how child welfare workers make decisions and if certain interventions like the concepts from safety science can help increase the information gathered to support decision making. This paper studied frontline workers and supervisors from Minnesota’s child welfare system to determine if the concepts that are used in safety science like that of local rationality impacted how child welfare frontline workers and supervisors made decisions and engaged with a family. Frontline child welfare workers and supervisors were interviewed about a case study to understand how they make decisions and the strategies that they use to inform decision making. The results of the interviews showed that frontline workers’ and supervisors’ own local rationality can play a role in supporting safety decisions and that local rationality varied amongst the participants depending on their focus of attention, knowledge and experiences and the goals that they were trying to achieve. This study also found that frontline workers’ and supervisors’ use their local rationality more readily when making decisions than tools and polices that are aimed to guide decision making and child welfare agencies may benefit from exploring this further.}},
author = {{Melsek, Casey}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Local Rationality and Frontline Child Welfare Workers’ Decision Making}},
year = {{2021}},
}