Assessing Children’s Risk of Abuse: The Influence of Context and Worker Variables on Professional Judgment (2006-2010)
Principal Investigator: Cheryl Regehr, University of Toronto
Co-Investigators: LeBlanc, V., Shlonsky, A. & Bogo, M., University of Toronto
Funded by: SSHRC Standard Research Grant
In an effort to improve the ability of child welfare agencies and individual workers within these agencies, to accurately identify children at risk of harm, child welfare services throughout the world, including Canada, are moving towards highly standardized risk assessment models. The assumption of these models is that uniform measures and training will result in consistent and accurate assessments. However, the importance assigned to standardized tools in child welfare practice has sparked considerable controversy due to the fact that most have questionable reliability and/or validity. This three-year research project seeks to investigate the degree to which the previous experiences of the worker and his or her pre-existing emotional and physiological state interacts with the context variables in the clinical situation and in turn influences professional judgment regarding the acute risk to a child. An experimental design utilizing standardized patients performing in risk scenarios was utilized. Participant child welfare workers recruited from local agencies were asked to rate the risk of harm to children presented in the scenarios on standardized instruments presently used in their practice. Psychological and biological measures of distress were administered before and after exposure to the scenarios. The influences of prior workplace trauma exposure, psychological and physiological arousal, parent variables and threat variables on professional judgment will be modeled.