Community-based multi-professional child protection decision making: Systematic narrative review.

Area of Science:

• Child Protection
• Social Work
• Public Health

Background:

• Multi-professional collaboration in child protection decision-making is encouraged.
• The conditions for effective joint working are not well understood.
• Community settings present unique challenges for collaborative practice.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore empirical evidence on implementing multi-professional child protection decision-making in community settings.
• To identify contextual conditions (inputs) and interactional aspects (mediators) of joint working.
• To examine the outcomes (outputs) of collaborative decision-making.

Main Methods:

• Systematic narrative literature review.
• Searched five electronic databases for English-language, peer-reviewed articles (2010-2019).
• Included 30 studies from six countries after screening 6934 retrieved studies.

Main Results:

• Identified key structural elements for collaborative decision-making.
• Highlighted cognitive, relational, and behavioral interactional properties in joint decision-making.
• Acknowledged limitations in published literature for robust outcome inferences.

Conclusions:

• Discusses future research directions for multi-professional child protection.
• Provides implications for policy and practice to enhance collaborative decision-making.
• Emphasizes the need for further investigation into the effectiveness of joint working.