Social Work Commons^™

Good Helping Relationships In Child Welfare: Co-Authored Stories Of Success (Summary Report), Catherine De Boer, Nick Coady

Partnerships for Children and Families Project

This project involved multiple, in-depth interviews with six worker-client dyads from child welfare. The dyads were selected on the basis of workers and clients agreeing that they had worked through some degree of negative interpersonal process toward the achievement of a good working relationship. For each dyad, two individual interviews with the worker and the client were followed by a joint interview. These interviews produced stories that described from workers' and clients' perspectives how the relationship developed over time, how difficulties were dealt with, and what impact the relationship had on the participants. Although these stories were written by the …

Good Helping Relationships In Child Welfare: Co-Authored Stories Of Success (Full Report), Catherine De Boer, Nick Coady

Partnerships for Children and Families Project

This project involved multiple, in-depth interviews with six worker-client dyads from child welfare. The dyads were selected on the basis of workers and clients agreeing that they had worked through some degree of negative interpersonal process toward the achievement of a good working relationship. For each dyad, two individual interviews with the worker and the client were followed by a joint interview. These interviews produced stories that described from workers' and clients' perspectives how the relationship developed over time, how difficulties were dealt with, and what impact the relationship had on the participants. Although these stories were written by the …

Family Talk: Parents And Children Involved With The Child Welfare And Children's Mental Health Systems (Full Report), Marshall Fine, Deena Mandell

Partnerships for Children and Families Project

Our project focussed on families who had been involved in services with child welfare and children’s mental health. Sixteen families were interviewed and asked to describe their experiences as clients, including positive and negative experiences, what they experienced as helpful and unhelpful, changes they identified as a result of their involvement, and characteristics and practices of the workers they liked most and least. We present their perspectives in order to build understanding of what contributes to making a positive difference in the lives of families in difficulty.

Mothers’ Everyday Realities And Child Placement Experiences (Full Report), Nancy Colleen Freymond

Partnerships for Children and Families Project

Placing a child in substitute care is one of the most challenging aspects of child welfare work. In situations of apprehension, child welfare workers may be required to make quick decisions about child placement sometimes with very limited information. This paper is based on interviews with mothers whose children were placed in substitute care. Mothers’ daily lives, including the nature of adversity in their lives, will be discussed. Mothers’ response to adversity and how they are impacted both positively and negatively by child welfare interventions will also be explored. Their experiences of placement reveals there is a disconnection between the …

Child Placement And Mothering Ideologies: Images Of Mothers In Child Welfare, Nancy Colleen Freymond

Partnerships for Children and Families Project

No abstract provided.

Stories Of Mothers And Child Welfare (Full Report), Gary Cameron, S. Hoy

Partnerships for Children and Families Project

The voices we hear describing the lives of mothers who come into contact with child welfare agencies are usually those of service providers and researchers. How do mothers make sense of their own lives and what happened to their families when they became involved with child welfare? This report provides an opportunity to listen to what 16 of these mothers had to say over conversations averaging 5 - 6 hours with each woman. Aspects of these stories will be familiar to some readers. Nonetheless, these stories challenge both popular and professional perceptions of who these mothers are and how they …

Invisible Lives: The Experiences Of Parents Receiving Child Protective Services (Full Report), Sarah Maiter, Sally Palmer, Shehenaz Manji

Partnerships for Children and Families Project

Involvement with child protective services (CPS) may be expected to be a stressful experience for parents. Usually their involvement is involuntary, initiated because someone believes they are not caring adequately for their children: this tells them that the community, or someone in the community, does not approve of them as parents. As families who become involved with CPS tend to be economically deprived and socially marginalized, they may view agency intervention as one more sign that they are not accepted by their community. Moreover it brings the fear of losing their children, perhaps forever. In this context, it is especially …

Bridging Or Maintaining Distance: A Matched Comparison Of Parent And Service Provider Realities (Summary Report), Karen Frensch, Gary Cameron

Partnerships for Children and Families Project

When service providers and parents engage with each other to improve family circumstances, do they have similar impressions of what is important and what is helpful? Our purpose in interviewing parents who have been involved in child protection services and their service providers was to understand how parents and service providers view each other, their interactions, and the services they are engaged in. We were also interested in the “official record”—the files that describe parents, children, their needs, and the services provided in response. A comparison of the perspectives of service providers, parents, and files highlights some of the barriers …

Bridging Or Maintaining Distance: A Matched Comparison Of Parent And Service Provider Realities (Full Report), Karen Frensch, Gary Cameron

Partnerships for Children and Families Project

When service providers and parents engage with each other to improve family circumstances, do they have similar impressions of what is important and what is helpful? Our purpose in interviewing parents who have been involved in child protection services and their service providers was to understand how parents and service providers view each other, their interactions, and the services they are engaged in. We were also interested in the “official record”—the files that describe parents, children, their needs, and the services provided in response. A comparison of the perspectives of service providers, parents, and files highlights some of the barriers …

Stories Of Mothers And Child Welfare (Summary Report), Gary Cameron, S. Hoy

Partnerships for Children and Families Project

The voices we hear describing the lives of mothers who come into contact with child welfare agencies are usually those of service providers and researchers. How do mothers make sense of their own lives and what happened to their families when they became involved with child welfare? This report provides an opportunity to listen to what 16 of these mothers had to say over conversations averaging 5 - 6 hours with each woman. Aspects of these stories will be familiar to some readers. Nonetheless, these stories challenge both popular and professional perceptions of who these mothers are and how they …

A Workplace Study Of Four Southern-Ontario Children’S Aid Societies (Full Report), C. Harvey, Deena Mandell, Carol Stalker, Karen Frensch

Partnerships for Children and Families Project

Rationale Children’s Aid Societies have experienced extensive change since the implementation of recent child welfare reforms in Ontario. Agencies are facing a number of challenges including recruiting and retaining staff, high workloads, extensive requirements for documentation and administration, and less time to serve families and children. The purpose of this study was to understand employee experiences as workers in child welfare.

Research Design A survey was distributed to employees of four children’s aid societies. Completion of the survey was voluntary and all individual responses were kept confidential. Completed surveys were returned directly to researchers. Six to eight months after the …

A Workplace Study Of Three Children’S Mental Health Centres In Southern Ontario, Carol Stalker, Deena Mandell, Karen Frensch, C. Harvey

Partnerships for Children and Families Project

Rationale Recent cuts to resources for children and families requiring children’s mental health services coupled with an increase in the number of children needing these services have left staff in many agencies feeling extremely challenged in providing positive service environments for children and families. In this context, agencies are faced with the challenge of providing working environments that attract and retain staff, particularly in children’s residential mental health services. The purpose of this study was to explore sources of job satisfaction and stress, and why employees stay with and leave these organizations, in an effort to understand what contributes to …

Siege And Response: Families’ Everyday Lives And Experiences With Children’S Residential Mental Health Services (Full Report), Gary Cameron, Catherine De Boer, Karen Frensch, Gerald R. Adams

Partnerships for Children and Families Project

Purpose
Our purpose in interviewing parents with a child placed in residential mental health treatment was threefold: (1) to understand the functioning of children requiring residential mental health treatment before, during, and after treatment; (2) to characterize parents’ perceptions of their families’ involvement with residential treatment; and, (3) to address the popular notion that children requiring residential treatment come from highly dysfunctional and potentially harmful families by describing prevalent family functioning patterns.

Methodology
|This report is based on information obtained by interviewing 29 primary caregivers who had a child placed in residential care at one of two Ontario children’s mental …

Canadian Child Welfare: System Design Dimensions And Possibilities For Innovation, Gary Cameron, Nancy Colleen Freymond

Partnerships for Children and Families Project

Ontario child welfare is entering territory where other countries have gone before. A decade earlier, jurisdictions in England, the United States and Australia implemented similar reforms and, not coincidentally, encountered comparable difficulties, creating high levels of dissatisfaction among service users and service providers. Our contention is that such frustrations are inherent consequences of the underpinnings of the “Anglo-American child protection paradigm”. To do better, it is helpful to look for ideas outside of what is familiar and to consider how useful approaches from other jurisdictions might be adapted to a Canadian context. There are two primary focuses for this paper: …

Understanding And Preventing Employee Turnover, C. Harvey, Carol Stalker

Partnerships for Children and Families Project

Child welfare agencies have identified worker turnover as a particularly problematic organizational issue. In children’s mental health agencies, turnover also seems to be an issue for residential care services. Do people voluntarily leave child welfare and children's mental health organizations because of the work itself, because of the workload, or because they find “success” difficult to experience? These are often given as reasons by departing employees, but to develop a comprehensive understanding why turnover takes place in these organizations, this paper looks at the research on turnover in organizations generally and in child welfare and children's mental health organizations specifically. …

Aboriginal Child Welfare, Deena Mandell, J. Clouston Carlson, Marshall Fine, Cindy Blackstock

Partnerships for Children and Families Project

As the relationships between Canada’s Aboriginal peoples and the state undergo changes, the issue of Child Welfare is in the foreground; for it is around the well being, education and care of Aboriginal children that much of the painful historical relationship between First Nations and Canadian government has been played out. In this paper we consider the major issues in Canadian Aboriginal child welfare, drawing upon an extensive review and synthesis of current theory and research. Although there is an abundance of material available concerning Aboriginal child welfare, much of it exists outside mainstream academic child welfare literature. Some of …

Mothers’ Everyday Realities And Child Placement Experiences (Summary Report), Nancy Colleen Freymond

Partnerships for Children and Families Project

Placing a child in substitute care is one of the most challenging aspects of child welfare work. In situations of apprehension, child welfare workers may be required to make quick decisions about child placement sometimes with very limited information. This paper is based on interviews with mothers whose children were placed in substitute care. Mothers’ daily lives, including the nature of adversity in their lives, will be discussed. Mothers’ response to adversity and how they are impacted both positively and negatively by child welfare interventions will also be explored. Their experiences of placement reveals there is a disconnection between the …

Invisible Lives: A Qualitative Study Of 61 Parents Receiving Child Protective Services (Summary Report), Sarah Maiter

Partnerships for Children and Families Project

Involvement with child protective services (CPS) may be expected to be a stressful experience for parents. Usually their involvement is involuntary, initiated because someone believes they are not caring adequately for their children: this tells them that the community, or someone in the community, does not approve of them as parents. As families who become involved with CPS tend to be economically deprived and socially marginalized, they may view agency intervention as one more signs that they are not accepted by their community; moreover it brings the fear of losing their children, perhaps forever. In this context, it is especially …

Siege And Response: Families’ Everyday Lives And Experiences With Children’S Residential Mental Health Services (Summary Report), Gary Cameron, Catherine De Boer, Karen Frensch, Gerald R. Adams

Partnerships for Children and Families Project

Our purpose in interviewing families who had a child placed in residential children’s mental health treatment was to provide insight into the lives and service experiences of these families as they struggle to care for their child and find appropriate services. As we endeavored to code, categorize, and make sense of the information shared with us by families several other more pointed purposes emerged as integral to our efforts. More specifically we became interested in understanding the functioning of children requiring residential mental health treatment before, during, and after treatment with the aim to comment on general patterns of change …

A Workplace Study Of Four Southern-Ontario Children’S Aid Societies (Summary Report), Cheryl Harvey, Deena Mandell, Carol Stalker, Karen Frensch

Partnerships for Children and Families Project

Children’s Aid Societies have experienced extensive change since the implementation of recent child welfare reforms in Ontario. Agencies are facing a number of challenges including recruiting and retaining staff, high workloads, extensive requirements for documentation and administration, and less time to serve families and children. This paper explores employee experiences as service providers in child welfare. A survey was distributed to employees of four Children’s Aid Societies and employees participated in a series of focus groups. The paper discusses how workplace experiences contribute to job satisfaction, to stress and burnout, and to staff turnover. Actions organizations can take to improve …