From the perspective of parents: Interviews following a child protection investigation: preliminary findings

Abstract

This report is based on interviews with 156 parents who had been investigated by a statutory child protection agency following notifications that concerned 219 children. The aim was to understand how parents perceived the investigation, how they felt about what had happened, and how they had responded to it. Parents were recruited into the study if they had experienced face-to-face contact with child protection workers because the statutory agency had deemed the risk to their children significant enough to warrant an investigation. Particular emphasis was placed on parents who had experienced this kind of investigation for the first time (as parents), so that the interviews captured the experience with a child protection authority unclouded by past incidents. Questions focused on perceptions of what child protection workers did and how they went about it, what parents thought about the report that instigated the investigation, the response of parents' social networks, feelings about being a parent, and expectations of the future. Items on the emotions of parents that require scaling and analysis in order to facilitate meaningful interpretation are not included in this preliminary report. This study took place as one component of a Australian Research Council funded Linkage Project titled Community Capacity Building in Child Protection through Responsive Regulation. Three universities collaborated on this project: The Australian National University, the University of South Australia, and the Australian Catholic University. The Linkage partner was the ACT Community Services Directorate. The broader focus of this Linkage Project, which was addressed through a number of separate studies, is whether the theory of responsive regulation (Ayres and Braithwaite 1992; J. Braithwaite 2002) could be applied to child protection practice to address systemic problems experienced by agencies in Australia and beyond. This study contributes to the broader project by providing an insight into the regulatory encounter from the perspective of those who are usually the object of regulation: parents. Responsive regulation assumes that individuals vary in the attitudes (postures) that they hold towards authorities (V. Braithwaite 2003) and that these postures along with their willingness and ability to respond to requests by authorities depends upon their perceptions of how authorities have treated them (Tyler 1990). The ability of child protection systems to build capacity in local communities depends upon the degree to which they are able to engender feelings of hope and empowerment within these communities (V. Braithwaite 2004). This study will use interviews with parents who have recently been subjected to a child protection intervention to understand how variations in these encounters impact upon outcomes.