Parents’ Participation in Child Protection Practice: Toward Respect and Inclusion

Here is a very good article about the importance of the involvement of parents in CPS cases. It is talking about Australia but it sounds very much like the way CPS handles things here in the US. In part it states:

Parents reported a range of difficulties in interactions with practitioners, including family-related and systemic factors; the most common grievances involved poor communication practices and negative worker attitudes, which created further disengagement. Conversely, interactions involving a willingness to listen, support, and provide for goal-focused plans were seen as facilitating positive outcomes. Taking into account the case complexity and interrelationships between workers’ and clients’ attitudes and behaviours, we discuss strategies for promoting parents’ participation.

Despite increased awareness of the benefits of involving parents in child protection practice, research with parents has documented widespread perceptions of exclusion and powerlessness (Kapp & Propp, 2002; Thorpe, 2008). Broadly speaking, key issues running through these studies are that interactions tend to be adversarial, with parents being placed in a position of having to respond to the case that has been made (Hall & Slembrouck, 2001; Thomson & Thorpe, 2004), and practitioners tend to focus on parents’ weaknesses, paying little attention to their caregiving qualities or child-rearing competence (Budd et al., 2001).

Read the rest of the article here - http://www.familiesinsociety.org/ArticleArchive/2011/92-3%20Healy.pdf