Emergency Risk Assessments in Child Welfare Services: Developing Structured Support to Professional Assessments

Abstract

The article presents a study on structured support for the professional assessment of emergent domestic violence in families with children. Data are presented on the development and study of a new structured support called iRiSk emergency, which was developed jointly by the authors of this article, and an emergency social work unit in Stockholm, Sweden. The model was developed from the iRiSk model, which, translated from Swedish, stands for ‘Interventions and Risk and Protection Assessments for children exposed to violence’. Structured support for emergency risk assessments is rare as existing instruments mainly focus on screening for violence and are not designed to guide professionals in situations of identified violence. The purpose of the research project is elaborated through two research questions: (1) Which information is needed for emergency assessments, and how can it be collected? (2) What are the specific preconditions of the child welfare service emergency work to be taken into account in terms of emergency risk assessments? The feedback from the social workers was that iRiSk emergency was flexible to use, decreased the risk of missing important risk factors and made the assessments more child-centred. The model appears to be a viable approach for enhancing the systematic evaluation and testing of structured support for emergency risk assessment in social work, surpassing the limitations of the current study.