Reasoning and bias: Heuristics in safety assessment and placement decisions for children at risk

Whether the decision-making process for children at risk is biased against families from lower socio-economic or minority statuses remains a vexing question for social work practice and research. This study successfully isolates the subjective decision-making process and the intervening effect of overexposure of disadvantaged families to the welfare system by utilising a vignette-based factorial survey. The vignettes were drawn from actual welfare files of high, low and ambiguous risk and then edited to correspond with the experimental manipulation. One hundred and five child welfare case workers were asked to evaluate the vignettes, as follows: (i) to assess the level of risk to the child ('subjective risk') and (ii) to decide whether they would recommend out-of-home placement. Children of minority and low socio-economic groups were more likely to be assessed as being at risk and were more likely to be removed from the home. Furthermore, even for the vignettes of high 'objective risk', after statistically controlling for the subjective risk assessment, families from a low socio-economic background were more likely to have their children removed from home. Important implications to social work practice and education which emerge from this innovative study are discussed.