Developing and validating a method for assessment of children´s caring activities in child protection assessments in the time of a pandemic

The original project is focused on developing a support method for assessing children ́s caregiving responsibilities in child protection.

This supplemental project will add knowledge about how children´s caring responsibilities are affected by the pandemic when children and their families are confined at home.

Children’s caring is conducted in the context of that the family has unmet needs and that the children’s caring may affect children’s health, attendance at school and their transition into adulthood. Taking on a high degree of caring responsibilities is recognised in child protection as a risk factor.

However, there is no support method for social workers in child protection investigation to use in doing child interview or assess the seriousness of the caring for the child.

The aim is to develop, test and implement a method in the form of a questionnaire for the assessment of the extent and outcome of children’s caring responsibilities in their family during a pandemic. Questions regarding the consequences for children´s caring will be added to the questionnaire.

Also, the study will  set a focus on children ́s caring duties related to violence in relation to the child spending time at home due to the pandemic.

For the practice-base project social workers from participating municipalities, Womens shelter, Maskrosbarn and Alternative to Violence will form a reference group, who is part of the work process in which a questionnaire is developed and tested. In the first step questions are developed concerning violence-related caring together with children.

In the next step the questionnaire is tested by social workers and children (N=30) for applicability, acceptance and validity.

In the final part the questionnaire is implemented for use by social workers doing needs assessment in child protection.

The evaluation social workers in focus groups, data from the questionnaire and from children ́s files for focus on caring in the assessments and support interventions.