Appropriate responses to potential child abuse: The importance of information quality

When people suspect a child or young person is experiencing, or at risk of, abuse or neglect, they have to decide how to respond. However, the under and over reporting of child welfare issues indicate that people may struggle to identify an appropriate response.

To develop scenarios (for future training and research purposes) that closely resemble the child welfare situations health/allied health practitioners encounter, and for which there is a reasonable level of child protection professional consensus as to what the appropriate response for each situation should be.

We developed 285 scenarios from 190 child protection reports made by health/allied health practitioners to two Australian government child welfare agencies, that covered a range of appropriate response pathways and abuse types. An appropriate response pathway for each scenario was identified by having 34 child protection professionals provide their opinion and rationales.

Child protection professionals displayed moderate (e.g., krippendorf's alpha = 0.58, 95 % CI: 0.52 to 0.62) interrater agreement as to the appropriate response pathway for the scenarios. For 127 of the 285 scenarios (44.56 %), there was strong consensus (K = 0.73, 95 % CI: 0.66 to 0.78).

Professional consensus was higher than anticipated from previous research, although still low compared to generally acceptable levels of consensus. Our results suggest several promising avenues to increase professional consensus, such as improving the quality of information that people typically report to child welfare agencies.