Title: Knowledge and knowing in child protection practice: An empirical exploration of the role of knowledge in constructing service user identities at the point of first referral
Abstract: Professionals who are supposed to deal with child abuse and neglect at the point of
first referral are under increasing pressure to adopt analytical styles of judgment and
decision making (JDM), often under the guise of Evidence-Based Practice (EBP). Based
ethnographic study which drew on Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and was conducted
Flemish agency that deals with child abuse issues, this thesis explores the types of
knowledge that are used by professionals when they construct service user identities and
make decisions. It is demonstrated that evidence-based and correspondence theory
approaches at this stage of the child protection process assume factors and signals to be
known whereas they are usually not. Furthermore it is shown that facts are made rather
than found, and that so-called interactional-contextual knowledge is all-important, and is
likely to take precedence over formal, received knowledge.
Three parallel processes of child protection work at the point of first referral are
theorised: the ongoing collective performance of agency and worker roles, competencies
and mandates; the continual attempt to engage those who have a private or professional
stake in the child's life which depends on the previous process; and the process of identity
construction that depends on the former two processes. Of the types of knowledge that
were employed during these three stages, interactional-contextual knowledge of service
users' lived experiences and organisational knowledge take a central role. It is argued that
conventional norms of professionalism as employed in most other fields, as well as
experimentalist evidence-based and other more analytical approaches to judgment and
decision making are not well suited for child protection work and social work in general.
Publication Year: 2011
Publication Date: 2011-01-01
Language: en
Type: dissertation
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Cited By Count: 1
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