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Weighing it up: family maintenance discourses in NGO child protection decision‐making in A otearoa/ N ew Z ealand
Author(s) -
Keddell Emily
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
child and family social work
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.912
H-Index - 57
eISSN - 1365-2206
pISSN - 1356-7500
DOI - 10.1111/cfs.12168
Subject(s) - aotearoa , child protection , social work , context (archaeology) , preference , hierarchy , welfare , social psychology , sociology , public relations , psychology , political science , gender studies , law , geography , economics , archaeology , microeconomics
Examining the concepts underpinning the reasoning processes of social worker's decision‐making provides important insights into how social work practice is undertaken. This paper examines one of the major discourses used by social workers in decision reasoning in a non‐governmental organization child protection context in A otearoa/ N ew Z ealand: family maintenance. This study found that family maintenance as a concept was strongly privileged by social workers. This resulted in attempts to preserve families and created a hierarchy of preferred decision outcomes. A preference for family maintenance was supported by legal, moral, psychological and M āori cultural concepts. This pattern of constructs underpinned the ‘weighing up of harms’ when considering removal, and generally reflected a child welfare orientation. In addition to this, it was found that ‘family’ was broadly defined, and could include people who had a relationship with the children, or M āori definitions of extended family, in addition to legal ones.