Osäkerhet vid placeringar av barn

– om individers, organisationers och marknaders föränderlighet

Abstract

--

This study explores causes for uncertainty that social workers experience when making assessments of out of home placements in foster or institutional care. Uncertainty is often considered to be an integral part of professional decision making, and the reason why professions are needed at all. Most research has concentrated on investigating how uncertainty is approached in education, professions, and organizations, while fewer studies deal with the circumstances producing uncertainty. In the present article, social workers’ and front-line managers’ reasoning in child protection cases is analyzed from an uncertainty perspective. The results are based on abductively processed ethnographic data (observations, interviews and validation work-shops) collected over a nine-month period in seven Swedish municipalities. Using the ecological decision-making framework, it is demonstrated that uncertainty in placement assessments is linked to ever changing circumstances of the individual (the children’s and parents’ relations and reactions), as well as the organization (budget, staffing and organizational boundaries), and the market (supply and availability). This means that when engaging in the improvement of child protection, it is not enough with methods and procedures for the social worker- client interaction, but that organizational- and market processes must be considered to a further extent. The study contributes with empirically grounded knowledge about the complexity surrounding placement considerations, and the circumstances that can cause uncertainty. The study also contributes to theory development on factors of importance for placement decisions by exploring these from an uncertainty lens and by identifying the market as an important external circumstance.