Improving the accuracy of social work judgements: A proof-of-concept study of a training programme

Abstract

Child and family social workers routinely make professional judgements involving significant legal and moral questions (e.g. whether a child has been abused) and more ‘everyday’ issues (e.g. will the child be re-referred again if we close the case now?) Yet the world is capricious, and we rarely know with certainty what is going to happen in future or the likely impact of our different choices. Given the consequences of their judgements and decisions, it is imperative that social workers are provided with the best possible support. This paper reports a proof-of-concept study of a set of interventions to improve the judgemental accuracy of social workers: (i) a survey to identify respondents with above-average existing abilities, (ii) training sessions on cognitive debiasing and (iii) structured group working and (iv) three methods for aggregating individual judgements. Findings indicate that it is possible to measure the accuracy of social work judgements in relation to case-study materials and retrospective questions, while the feedback about the training was largely positive. Any future studies should aim to recruit a more diverse set of respondents, test judgemental accuracy in relation to prospective judgements and explore what types of questions would be most helpful for real-world decision-making.