Who is being helped? : the challenge of including adolescents in child protection

Background: In the Swiss child protection system, when child well-being is endangered, social workers are often assigned to the family both to assist the family in improving the situation and to monitor the best interests of the child. We examined how caregivers and adolescents perceived these “child guardianships” in terms of participation, fairness, and impact. Methods: A client survey was combined with in-depth case studies. The survey included 213 caregivers (31 % fathers) and 86 adolescents (51 % girls). In the case studies, 19 caregivers and 10 adolescents were interviewed. Findings: A minority of caregivers had strong reservations about the fairness and efficacy of the guardianships. Fathers and German native-speaking caregivers perceived the guardian-ships as significantly less fair than did mothers and non-native speakers, respectively. More than half of adolescents reported they did not fully understand the objectives of the guardianship, and a majority said the support was not generally effective in improving their own situation or their family’s. In the interviews, adolescents often seemed to trust the social worker to be assisting the parent in some way, but they rarely saw the social worker as any help to themselves. Conclusions: The study examines a key challenge to child protection practice: how to directly include children and adolescents in support processes that are occasioned by perceived problems in the parents’ actions towards their children. Our findings reveal that under present circumstances in Switzerland, adolescents often feel detached. We conclude by considering cases that seemed to defy that rule.