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Abstract: Professionals in many contexts confront situations where children have been harmed or are at risk of harm. These include health, mental health, disability, and education, as well as a complex array of child and family welfare services. This paper focuses on the perspectives of workers within four child and family welfare service types: statutory child protection, domestic violence, family support, and intensive family support. As part of a broader study on participatory decision-making, 21 practitioners from two sites in Queensland, Australia, discussed their assessment and proposed intervention in relation to a vignette description of a family situation involving chronic neglect, substance abuse and domestic violence. This discussion was conducted in the context of an in-depth interview with each practitioner. Practitioners from all service types identified this as a high-risk case, and generally nominated similar environmental, parent-related and child-related issues. Further, their proposed response comprised a constellation of actions incorporating assessment of harm to the children, engaging family support services, attending to the needs of parents, and building a relationship with the parents. This commonality is of particular interest, given the complexity of the child and family welfare sector and the different roles played by different organisations. Building on these findings, we consider implications for the development of sector-wide approaches to risk assessment and for training of child protection professionals across a range of agency types. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

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There is a growing body of research about the current forms of electronic information systems (IS) being used in human service organisations in both the UK and Australia, which demonstrates that, far from being a positive development, their implementation can impede service delivery. These problems have been acknowledged in the recent review of child protection services in England by Professor Eileen Munro and attention is now shifting to how current IS may be modified and future IS designed. In this article, 'technologies-in-practice', as a conceptual approach to understanding the interactions between practitioners and IS, is applied to the findings of research that focused on how practitioners in a child protection agency used a set of decision-making tools (Structured Decision Making) embedded in an IS. The aim is to demonstrate how this approach might be used to contribute to an evidence base that might guide the future development of IS in ways that enhance the abilities of practitioners, particularly by focusing attention on their needs rather than organisational imperatives for compliance and accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Victims' responses to violent experiences within intimate relationships are highly diverse and can range from remaining silent, at least temporarily, to disclosing the abuse to informal and formal sources of support. Decisions to remain silent or to reach out for support are influenced by a complex range of factors, including situational circumstances, such as the presence of children. Using data from in-depth interviews with victims of IPV ( N = 29) in Southeast Queensland, Australia, I examined victims' responses to IPV when children are present in the abusive household. Victims, who accessed general formal support sources, including the criminal justice systems and Child Protection Services (CPS), frequently faced stereotypical and victim-blaming attitudes along with a lack of understanding of the dynamics of IPV and the circumstances surrounding victims' help-seeking decisions. The presence of children in abuse relationships complicated victims' help-seeking decisions because fear of harm and loss of custody often delayed or hindered the disclosure of IPV to formal support sources. Once disclosing the abuse victims often found themselves trapped between CPS expectations to protect their children by leaving the abusive partner and a reluctance on behalf of judges and magistrates to offer the necessary protection by including children on granted Domestic Violence Orders (DVO). These findings highlight the ongoing need for specialized training of CPS personnel, judges and magistrates along with an ongoing collaboration with the women's sector to ensure the safety of victims and their children throughout the help-seeking process and to improve victims' confidence in disclosing IPV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]