NCJ Number
220877
Journal
Child Abuse & Neglect: The International Journal Volume: 31 Issue: 9 Dated: September 2007 Pages: 919-933
Date Published
September 2007
Length
15 pages
Annotation
This study evaluated the effects of expert-assisted child abuse and neglect case management within the German child welfare and healthcare systems.
Abstract
The results of this study indicate expert assisted case management is generally not effective. There are no specialized child protective services available in Germany, and children may be processed either within the child welfare system, the legal system, or the healthcare system with little or no coordination between agencies. Expert-assisted case management might change the case workers’ perception of the evidence for abuse and guide their interventions to provide child protection, but generally case workers did not perceive intervention as effective; modifications to the current method could improve children’s participation. Social workers, physicians, psychologists, psychotherapists, and counselors for 12 different institutions in the German State of Baden-Wuerttemberg participated in the study. A consecutive series of 80 newly recognized or suspected cases of child abuse or neglect were enrolled in the study during the recruitment period: 58 cases were from the child welfare system, and 22 cases were reported by clinicians from the health care system. Each case was randomly assigned either to the intervention group or the control group. In the intervention condition, the case workers were contacted by a child protection expert to hold an initial case conference within 4 weeks of reporting the case. In urgent cases, the first case conference was held within a few days. A minimum of one and a maximum of five followup case conferences were conducted within the intervention period of 6 months. The intervention was performed by experts with practical expertise in child protection. Written protocols completed at the end of each session recorded the definition of case-specific goals concerning further investigation, diagnosis or intervention, and evaluation of goal attainment was recorded at the following case conference. Future studies should integrate more sophisticated methods for the evaluation of the effectiveness of interventions for child abuse and/or neglect, including multi-informant strategies. Tables, references