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In most child protection jurisdictions, a case of child death or serious injury through the actions or inaction of a parent or carer is responded to with an inquiry into the circumstances that led to the death of the child. A key objective of such inquiries is to discern what may have been done by public agencies to prevent the child's death or serious injury and this may, in turn, lead to changes in existing policies or the development of new policies. Such changes have, at times, been criticised as 'knee jerk' reactions and can lead to well-meaning but possibly counter-productive initiatives. A general observation is that, in some inquiry reports, there is little, if any, reference to research and theory about child protection practice and policy. In this article, an anonymised case study of a child death inquiry is used to analyse the decision-making processes of child protection practitioners using a range of theory and research. The aim is to demonstrate how the use of insights from theory and research can lead to an enhanced understanding of the circumstances that led to a child death or serious injury, one which is grounded in current knowledge and evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social work is a mostly discursive practice, comprised of the verbal and written interactions between service users, social workers, social work managers and supervisors and numerous external agencies. The words used to describe service users and service delivery are therefore important. These words change over time, and new words come into use. With the introduction of New Public Management, new concepts and ideas were introduced to social work service delivery and practice and new words became embedded in the social work lexicon. One of the new words that emerge in both the authors' research with social work agencies is 'transparency'. In this article, a critical thematic analysis of the meanings of transparency as it is used in recent social work research literature and commentary is presented. Transparency is explored in relation to how it is used, when it is used, by whom and in relation to what (and who), from the macro-level of social work agencies and governments to the micro-level of individuals as practitioners and service users. In problematising transparency, a rationale for future research is proposed about what transparency means, and could mean, in the context of social services provision and, in particular, for service users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decision making in social work, especially in child protection services, is increasingly being assisted by algorithmically based decision support tools. These tools assign a quantified level of risk of child maltreatment, or what is considered a proxy for child maltreatment, and have been used to assist decisions about which referrals to screen in for further investigation. These tools may have been trained using vast amounts of data held in public services databases and perhaps dozens of characteristics of both parents and children. Characteristics, or predictors, are given a weighting in terms of their correlation with child maltreatment and one characteristic that has been given a high weighting is that of previous involvement of a child or parent with child protection services. In this article, through a process of 'skeptical thinking', the different meanings of previous involvement are explored in relation to parents and children and child protection agencies. The aim is to further debate about the development and use of algorithmically based decision tools and highlight the role social workers can play in this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnographic studies of people at the margins of society, struggling with complex and intertwined personal and social problems, have provided useful insights to social work students and practitioners. Similarly, ethnographic studies of social work practice have provided deeper understandings of how professionals work with individuals, groups and organizations. It has been argued that, given the similarities in the skills required to be an ethnographer and a professional social worker, ethnography should be included in social work curricula, both as an approach to research and as a way to enhance practice skills. The main contribution of this article is to extend this argument using the novel approach of exploring the similarities and divergences between the epistemological approaches of ethnography and social work, in terms of how knowledge is sought, constructed and critically questioned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Big data techniques are being used in children's protective services to develop algorithmically based decision support systems (DSSs) to identify the most vulnerable children and introduce early and preventive services. These techniques use administrative data from multiple public agencies but are most reliant on data from children's protective services. Using key principles from representation theory, and drawing from the author's research, data from children's protective services are considered in terms of the extent to which they represent and can be interpreted to provide a faithful representation of the phenomenon of child maltreatment. The aim is to address the question of whether children's protective services data are good enough to develop accurate and practically useful DSS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electronic information systems (IS) have been implemented quite extensively in social welfare agencies the North America, Europe and Australasia and the problems that have arisen have been well documented by researchers. In the Asia Pacific region, IS are less common in social welfare agencies, though many agencies are increasingly expected to implement one. This paper reports on an ethnographic study of an agency in Australia during the initial phases of developing and designing an IS and provides timely insights which may assist in avoiding the costly mistakes and unintended consequences that have arisen elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problems with current forms of electronic information systems (IS) being used by social welfare agencies have been documented by researchers internationally and attention is turning to how they might be better designed and used. In this article, drawing from ethnographic research about IS implementation and evaluation with a number of social welfare agencies, two different approaches—one simple and one complex—to designing and using IS in social welfare agencies are presented. The advantages and disadvantages of each approach, as emerged from discussions with research participants, are explored. The aim of the article is to assist both decision makers and practitioners in social welfare agencies to clarify their needs in relation to how future IS are designed and used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Government and non-government social welfare agencies have invested heavily in information technology, such as electronic information systems (IS) but evaluations have shown that they may undermine rather than support frontline practice. In this article, the findings of research in which senior managers and information technology managers were asked to reflect on why a particular application failed to achieve its aims are presented. The insights they provide can be used to guide future decision-making about the adoption of information technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Implementing a practice framework with a clear theoretical and practical approach to working with children and families seems a self-evident way to improve practice, but there is a paucity of evaluative research about their impact on outcomes for children and families. One reason for this lack of research may be that it is challenging. In this article, these challenges are explored in relation to fidelity, impact, attribution, and the positioning of the researcher. To generate ideas about how to conduct evaluative research, research about solution-based casework is explored, with additional insights from research about other frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]