Professionals’ characteristics, victim’s gender, and case assessments as predictors of professional judgments in child protection

Scant research on child protection professionals\u27 decision-making demonstrates complexity of identifying and responding to child maltreatment. In order to understand processes involved in professionals’ judgements, methodological approaches are needed which allow that multiple potentially relevant factors are evaluated. A technique of vignettes was used in this study of 87 Croatian and 72 Swedish social workers. The first aim was to investigate if professional’s individual characteristics and experiences and their social welfare system/culture were related to professionals’ reactions to a case of alleged child abuse depicted in a vignette. Results showed that age, parenthood status, length of professional experience, frequency of corporal punishment and bruises in childhood and a country of residence correlated with particular variables from the domain of case assessments and judgements about appropriate interventions. The second aim was to determine the relative contributions of professionals’ characteristics, victim’s gender and case assessments to explaining differences in judgements about appropriateness of removing a child from home compulsorily and maintaining a child at home with social support being offered. Female gender of the abused child, perceptions of father’s violence, previous judgements about appropriate interventions and assessment of risk and main problem/s at the final stage predicted judgements about removing a child from home