Infants and the Child Welfare System: An Exploration of Practice and Policy Responses

The overarching objectives of this three-paper dissertation are to: (1) build upon and extend the minimal knowledge base with respect to infants in a Canadian child welfare context; and, (2) identify opportunities and challenges for promoting the optimal development of infants through an exploration of child welfare practice and policy responses in Ontario. A developmentally-informed framework guided this research. The first two papers utilized data from the 2013 cycle of the Ontario Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect (OIS-2013) to create a clinical portrait of infants and families involved with the child welfare system. The first paper explored the most influential clinical factors associated with the decision to transfer a case to ongoing services (i.e., characteristics of the infant, primary caregiver, household, case and of the short term services provided). The second paper examined the clinical factors predictive of the decision to refer families to services and age-specific differences in the clinical portrait and types of services referred to. The third paper explored how the science of early childhood development could inform and enhance child welfare policies and practices with infants and their families. The findings indicated that the most influential predictor of the provision of ongoing services was having a primary caregiver with few social supports; whereas, being a victim of intimate violence (IPV) and younger caregiver age were the caregiver risk factors that were significantly associated with a referral. There were age-specific differences in both the clinical profiles and the services referred to, suggesting that infants are a distinctly vulnerable subpopulation of children. The findings converge on the importance of developing policies and practices that target the unique needs and experiences of infants and their families. Key findings, themes, implications for social work, and recommendations for future research, policy, practice and advocacy efforts are proposed.Ph.D.2018-07-06 00:00:0