Care Order Decisions-in the Domain of Social Work or the Courts? Social Workers' Frontline Views

This article examines social workers' views on care order decisions in Finnish child welfare where the decision-making procedure takes place in either the social work or court domain depending on the parties' consent or objection to the care order proposal. Exploring this parallel decision-making system provides insights into the less studied characteristics of non-adversarial decision-making compared with those of adversarial decision-making. Based on the interviews of twenty-nine social workers, the findings present a binary view of social workers: the court domain is mainly seen as being an arena for the legal safety for families whereas the social work domain is a psychosocial, fluent and smooth arena for making care order decisions important to family members. The study points out potential misuse of the social work domain. Additional safeguards are suggested to complement the existing legal, professional and ethical safeguards as well as the re-evaluation of the role and nature of consent as a divider of the decision-making procedures. If a child needs to be removed from his/her parents' care into public care, it is internationally common that the court makes the care order decision. In exploring the Finnish child welfare system this study provides an alternative view on making the care order decisions, a view more rarely presented in the child welfare research than the court-based, adversarial decision-making systems. In Finland, if parents and children (12 years or older) consent to the care order proposal, the care order decision is made by a social worker in the social work domain without any court involvement. The threshold and legal implications of the decision are exactly the same as those made by the court. This study explores the social workers' front-line views on the characteristics of the social work and court domain. In their view, the social work domain provides a forum for smooth psychosocial decision-making process whilst the court domain is mainly only for the legal safety of the families. This binary view blurs the nature of the decision. The study also points out some potential misuse of the social work domain. The role of consent as a divider of the decision-making procedures is not unproblematic.