‘Evaluating the quality of social work judgements: What happens to children and families following an assessment?’.

Summary

Social workers make many important judgements and decisions about children and their families. They undertake assessments of need, judge whether children are at risk of significant harm, and help decide how to share limited resources between many families. These judgements and decisions affect thousands of families every year in Wales. Yet the quality of social work judgement and decision-making has been repeatedly criticised and we need to know more about this in Wales, so we can support and train social workers more effectively. The purpose of this PhD is to evaluate the quality of judgements made by child and family social workers in Wales, using two criteria – coherence (how well they ‘hang together’?) and accuracy (how often things happen when social workers say they are likely or unlikely?) The student would begin by talking to parents, young people, and social workers, to co-produce a tool for evaluating the coherence of social work judgements. They would then identify a sample of assessments (n=50) and evaluate them using this tool. Next, they would interview the social workers who completed the assessments, do some tests to establish their ability to think and reflect, and ask them what they think is likely and unlikely to happen for the family over the next year. Each family would then be ‘tracked’ for 12 months, using social care records and follow-up questionnaires (of the social workers), to see what happens, and to evaluate the accuracy of the social worker’s judgements. The outcomes of the PhD would be (i) a better understanding of the quality of social work judgements in Wales and (ii) the extent to which social workers Version 1 December 2022 6. Keywords Keywords: Judgement, decision-making, assessment, child protection, social work. with better critical thinking skills are able to make better judgements, plus (iii) a bespoke and co-produced tool to help evaluate the quality of social work judgements.