Browsing by Subject "child welfare"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Examining Collaboration Within Child Welfare Multidisciplinary Teams: How Home-Based Therapists Respond to Conflict
    (2020-05) Walsh, Matthew A.; Pierce, Barbara; Seybold, Peter; Starnino, Vincent; Victor, Bryan
    When the child welfare system becomes involved with a family in need of services it does so with the goal of concluding its involvement by finding a safe and permanent placement for the children, ideally with their parents. This challenging and complicated work often has many issues that need to be addressed before a successful closure can occur. To achieve this goal, multiple service providers with various backgrounds, degrees, and professions are tasked with working with each other and the family through a collaborative team called a multidisciplinary team (MDT). However, collaboration is not always guaranteed, and conflict can emerge as the team attempts to best serve the family. This conflict may emerge among professionals and between professionals and the family. Although the underlying factors of collaboration and conflict have been documented and studied, research on the process of resolving conflict when it occurs in MDTs is severely lacking in the literature. Furthermore, MDTs specific to the child welfare system also lack the focus they deserve within the child welfare literature. This grounded theory study addresses the gap by focusing on child welfare MDTs and specifically on home-based therapists (N=20) to determine not only their perceptions of facilitators and barriers to collaboration but also the process that they and their fellow service providers engage in when addressing and resolving conflict. In conducting this qualitative study, this researcher used grounded theory to construct a theory outlining the processes that home-based therapists utilize to resolve conflict within MDTs, starting with the emergence of the conflict and detailing the decision making process through the team’s reaction and the ultimate decision or final result. In the future, these findings could be used to aid and train other MDT members as they face their own conflicts with the hope that a more efficient conflict resolution process will lead to a more effective MDT that keeps its focus on the family and provides the needed treatment and services in a timely manner.
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    Organizational justice and secondary traumatic stress among child welfare workers: The moderated mediation model
    (Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy (American Psychological Association), 2023-10-25) Kim, Jangmin; Choi, Mijin; Pierce, Barbara
    Objective: Secondary Traumatic Stress (STS) is documented as a common occupational hazard among child welfare workers. We examined the moderated mediation effects of distributive, procedural, and interpersonal justice on child welfare workers’ STS. Method: We analyzed survey data collected from 1053 child welfare workers in a Midwestern state in 2018. Participants were asked to rate their STS and perceived organizational justice using valid scales. Hypotheses were tested using multiple regression and the PROCESS macro. Results: Distributive justice was a stronger factor associated with STS. The direct effect of procedural justice was not significant. However, it was associated indirectly with STS through distributive justice. Interpersonal justice was associated directly with STS. Furthermore, it moderated the association between distributive justice and STS. Conclusion: Findings suggest that the different types of organizational justice have different functions in reducing child welfare workers’ STS. This study can contribute to developing justice-oriented and trauma-informed organizations that prevent child welfare workers’ STS and reduce its negative effects on themselves, organizations, and children in the child welfare system.
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    Teaming up in child welfare: The perspective of guardians ad litem on the components of interprofessional collaboration
    (Elsevier, 2019-01) Phillips, Jon D.; Walsh, Matthew A.; School of Social Work
    Policies and researchers have emphasized the need for interprofessional collaboration (IPC) in the child welfare system. However, few child welfare studies have sought to identify the components of IPC and no studies have been conducted in the U.S. to examine the perspective of guardians ad litem (GALs) on these components. Understanding the GAL viewpoint is warranted as they are mandated to be appointed in court-involved child welfare cases. This qualitative study addresses these gaps by exploring the GAL perspective on the main components of IPC. Interviews were conducted with 12 GALs in a mountain region state. Nine components of IPC emerged from the analysis, including communication and information sharing; problem-solving; respect and appreciation; joint decision-making; clarifying roles, responsibilities and expectations; sharing ideas and perspectives; mutual trust; shared responsibility; and establishing shared goals. The findings can inform the development of strategies to improve IPC in child welfare and guide future research.