Questions of control in child protection decision making: Laypersons’ monitoring and governance in child protection committees in Sweden

Abstract

Summary

In Sweden, decision making in child protection is heavily dependent on laypersons appointed to municipal child protection committees (CPCs). These laypersons have the power to decide upon proposals coming from professionals. Members of the committees are appointed from among their political party’s members. In the committee, they are supposed to act as judicious laypersons equipped with sound judgement. In this study, 31 committee meetings in three municipalities were followed using observational techniques and audio recordings. The appointed CPC members’ decision-making processes and communicative strategies to influence social work practice were analysed.

Findings

The results show differences between the CPCs, indicating localized decision-making cultures. The representatives worked (not as party politicians, but) as a team with the professionals as counterparts. Communication strategies, most frequently questions, were used to govern the social work practice, over and above the decision making. Questions served both to obtain the information needed and also to exert normative influence by setting up a normative grid for ways to pass the committee.

Applications

This research shows that social work in Sweden has a long way to go until it is acknowledged full professional status. The study also suggests that improvements in the CPCs’ decision making need to be based on a closer look at the laypersons’ knowledge, values and common sense and how these aspects affect decision making.

Keywords

Social work child protection decision making professional boundaries out-of-home care institutional talk discourse analyses

Introduction

Child protection in Sweden is administered by each municipality’s Department of Social Services. The Swedish system has been categorized as family-oriented, with a mandatory reporting system aimed at supporting and protecting vulnerable children. Interventions are primarily directed towards supporting and preserving families and a fairly large share of expenditure is put into preventive measures. Compared to other Western countries, the Swedish model has a relatively small proportion of children in out-of-home care, as well as a relatively large proportion of the country’s GDP spent on child welfare (Gilbert, Parton, & Skivenes, 2011). Almost half of the cost of social services (which includes financial support to low income households, support to drug abusers and vulnerable families/children) is spent on child protection (Socialstyrelsen, 2010), and approximately 40% of the professional social workers in the country provide support and protection to children and adolescents (Meeuwisse, Scaramuzzino, & Swaürd, 2011).¹

Still, each year almost 25,000 children and adolescents in Sweden (i.e., 1.1% of the population aged 0–20 years) are placed in out-of-home care at some time during the year. Despite the number of professionals working in child welfare, it is politically appointed laypersons in the municipal child protection committees (CPCs) who make decisions about cases going into out-of-home care. The CPCs’ decisions should be based on child protection investigations coming from professionals. Consequently, child protection in Sweden might not only be distinguished as family-oriented, but we also suggest using the term ‘laypersonalized’ to refer to its governance aspects. By this concept we mean that persons without specific education or training are given power and specific roles to affect practice.

A previous part of our study, including a national survey of 99 CPCs (Forkby, Höjer, & Liljegren, 2013; Höjer, Forkby, & Liljegren, 2014), showed that the CPC members themselves viewed their common sense as a major source of knowledge used in decision making. It further showed that they generally trusted the professionals’ competence and viewed party politics as having no place in either the committees’ business or their decision making. Analyses of the data did, however, suggest that political/ideological commitments nevertheless had some influence, as did a major socialization factor stemming from the CPC members’ educational background. In this article, we analyse the actual procedure in CPCs – how they monitor and communicate, and how, if so, the CPC members act to influence the professional practice, aside from their role in deciding upon child protection cases.

Political governance in most Swedish municipalities is realized through the local government, a municipal executive board, and boards for different sectors, for example, a social welfare board. Members of these assemblies are appointed by the locally elected parties and chosen from among party members, to reflect the parties’ voter shares in an election (Bäck, 2006). Swedish municipalities have become more of an arena for party politics since the mid-20th century, especially at the higher assemblies (Ekström von Essen, 2003; Giljam, Karlsson, & Sundell, 2010), but it is common that sector boards and sub-assemblies put party politics aside for the benefit of traditional layperson governance (Bengtsson & Karlsson, 2012). Normally, a social welfare board is responsible for broad political issues, such as the budget, priorities, and general directions of the social services, and from this a Child Protection Committee (CPC)² is chosen to make decisions in individual cases. Although the committee members are appointed by their political party, the democratic principle of these assemblies generally follows the layperson principle, meaning that committee members act primarily as judicious citizens gaining insight into, and monitoring, the public sector, learning about the life circumstances of different groups, contributing with their knowledge, and partaking in important decisions. In this, they are thought to strengthen both the democratic capital in society, for example, by transforming their insight into political issues, and the legitimacy of the public sector, for instance, by controlling the bureaucracy and contributing to better decisions (Bengtsson & Karlsson, 2012).

Child welfare legislation in Sweden comprises general regulations concerning voluntary support and specific regulations about compulsory measures. The legislation also states that decisions in individual cases are the responsibility of the social welfare boards (or, most often, a sub-committee of the board). Committee members act as decision makers both directly, when considering care proposals emanating from child protection investigations, and indirectly, by delegation to professionals (and often encoded in bureaucratic regulations). Some decisions, for example regarding longer placements in out-of-home care and compulsory care, cannot be delegated. Compulsory care refers to being taken into care such as mandatory (residential) measures to protect the child from abuse or their own criminality, drug abuse or on otherwise destructive behaviour undertaken without the parents’ or the young person’s own consent. In cases of voluntary placements, the committee makes the final decision, and when compulsory care is in question, the committee decides whether or not to proceed with the case in an administrative court.

Aims and issues

The aim of this article is to describe and analyse how CPCs consider care proposals in child protection investigations. More specifically, we will analyse how they take action on and make decisions on child protection cases, and how, if so, the CPC members, individually or as a group, act to generally influence social work practice in their municipality. At a theoretical level, the issue is to investigate what impact an institutionalized system of laypersons has on the governing of professional social work.

Specific questions we asked were:

What monitoring processes form part of the CPC members’ decision making on child protection cases, and what do they consist of? By monitoring we mean the discourse and communicative practices used during the CPC meetings.

What are the CPC members’ main topics of interest in decision making in child protection cases, and how are these communicated?

Which, if any, communication strategies (or ‘devices’) are used to affect child protection practice and the care proposals, and how are such strategies used?

Theoretical framework and previous research

Swedish, British and US systems: A comparison

A comparison of child protection in Sweden to two well-known systems, the British and US systems, shows that laypersons play a much more prominent role in Sweden (Liljegren, Höjer, & Forkby, 2014). In all three countries, most child protection decisions are made with the parents’ consent and taken by the professional social workers themselves, although it can be difficult to distinguish between family support approaches and when coercive action is needed (Corby, 2003). However, with regard to the decision process of removing children from their parents, there are clear differences with respect to influence by laypersons.

In all three systems, it is professional social workers who decide whether to initiate coercive action, such as taking a child into care. The Swedish system, however, involves decision making, first by the CPC constituted of laypersons, and then at administrative courts, which also largely comprise laypersons. After no more than six months, the CPC reviews the case. In Britain, when a process like this is started in child protection, the case is brought before the Family Proceedings Court by social workers (Parton & Berridge, 2011). A district judge who is legally qualified leads the hearing. Magistrates without professional/formal legal training make most of the decisions (Bell & Dadomo, 2006; Murch, 2012). Independent reviewing officers (professionals) then review the case. The initial review takes place within three months of the hearing and, after that, reviews take place every six months (Schofield, Beek, & Ward, 2012; Stanley, 2009).

In the US, legal professionals play a more important role. When a child is identified as being at severe risk, a child welfare investigator performs a risk assessment and a case worker and his or her supervisor can remove the child from his or her parents. Within 24–48 hours of this decision, the social workers have to present the case to a judge in a family court. When the case is processed in court, the judge has the opportunity to appoint volunteer laypersons to support the child, and these are normally the only laypersons involved in the decision-making process. An exception is if the parents want a jury to decide the case, but most cases are decided by the family court judge (Lee, 2007). If the judge decides to remove the child from the parents, the case has to be reviewed after 12–18 months, at which point, the judge decides whether to permanently remove the parental responsibilities from the former parents (Schofield et al., 2012). In sum, in this respect, the US system can be seen as the most professionalized (and with the smallest role for laypersons), and the Swedish as the least professional, with the British somewhere in between (see Dickens, 2008 for a discussion of the relation between social work and legal professionals in Britain).

The Swedish context: Background to CPCs

A central idea behind the modern Swedish welfare system (as in many democracies) is that politicians formulate policies in different areas and that executives in public administration are responsible for the implementation process and the operative work (Haus, Heinelt, & Stewart, 2005). The political level basically decides on priorities, goals, time frames, and budgets, but for reasons of effectiveness and competence, politicians’ decision making in matters directly affecting individuals is limited to very few areas (Bengtsson & Karlsson, 2012; Calabresi & Bobbitt, 1978). Historically, until the mid-20th century, laypersons acted as both decision makers and executives in child protection and other municipal issues (Ekström von Essen, 2003; Lundström, 1993). Subsequently, trained social workers gained a stronger voice and became more common in practice, first in the cities (Pettersson, 2001) and later in the smaller municipalities (Forkby, 2006). Today, professional social workers are given the mandate to determine day-to-day practice, but CPCs still hold the decision-making power.

Decision making in social care: Theoretical positions

In their decision making, the CPCs are heavily dependent on institutional discourse, such as written artefacts (the investigations) and verbal communication (talk at the meetings), and their work is regulated by practice, norms, values and power relations within that particular setting. Institutional discourse has the double role of reflecting roles, expectations and the logic of the tasks of the organization, on the one hand, and (re)constructing these aspects, on the other (Drew & Heritage, 1992b). Discourse can never be separated from power and using direct and indirect communication devices, that is, different strategies of using communication (devices) in order to obtain a certain effect (cf. Park, 2010), suggest the ‘right’ way to understand problems and the roles, positions, obligations, and relations between the involved actors. As a consequence, what is viewed as desirable, normative or even normal is affected. Pierre (2011), tracing the developments in governance, describes a shift in focus, from the focus being on a static and well-structured ‘government’ to it being on interaction and fragmentation – from institutions to processes. This kind of governance aims to control by discipline, that is, to govern the mentality of (self-controlling) agents who act in accordance with what they have internalized as the normal, right or just the thought of the best way to go about doing things (Chambon, Irving, & Epstein, 1999; Chourliaraki & Fairclough, 1999; Foucault, Burchell, Gordon, & Miller, 1991).

An important aspect of the CPC members’ verbal actions is to pose questions. These can come in many different forms apart from plain interrogatives, which perform various functions apart from searching for information, including criticism and implying some action (Braun, 2011; Freed & Ehrlich, 2010; Tracy & Robles, 2009). In this study, we are interested in determining if the questions are also used as a controlling device. Questions can serve to gain interactional control, and suggest and/or mirror power relations. In typical asymmetrical interactions, such as doctor–patient or judge–accused interactions, questions are used strategically by the one in power and are important tools according to that person’s institutional practices (Marková & Foppa, 1991; Maynard, 1991). The person in power controls the turn-type allocation, giving a frame to the communication in which the individual he or she has questioned is expected to answer (Atkinson & Drew, 1979). However, in the CPCs, power relations are more blurred. Although the CPC members hold one central dimension of power (to decide), they are dependent on the professionals’ power of theoretical and specific case knowledge (Clegg, 1989). In order to gain influence aside from the actual decisions, the members can therefore be expected to negotiate and/or use implying interactional strategies, signalling what is desired rather than demanding it.

Methods

We selected three municipalities on the basis of size, in order to obtain variations and rich data but not so as to be generalizable in a statistical sense. The chosen municipalities were one fairly large (>50,000) municipality: ‘Mun A’, one district in a fairly large city (>100,000): ‘Mun B’, and a small municipality (<15,000): ‘Mun C’. These CPCs typically had formal meetings every second week and each meeting took from about 40 minutes to two hours, most lasting a little more than one hour. We observed 31 of these meetings during a period of nine months. The data for the analysis consists of the verbatim discussions from those CPC meetings digitally recorded and transcribed (Mun A and Mun C: 10 meetings each; Mun B: 11 meetings) and involves 250 child protection cases. We also collected contextual ‘ethnographic’ information about the room and composition of the meeting, as well as about various forms of non-verbal communication, as is recommended in the analysis of institutional discourse (Cameron, 2007; Drew & Heritage, 1992a; Sarangi & Roberts, 1999). We analysed the data in several steps using QSR NVivo 9 software for qualitative data, which also allows some quantitative analysis. Field notes from the observations together with individual interviews with the 15 CPC members were used to help the analyses of the transcribed communication, for example, to construct the thematic structure.

There are several ways to analyse discursive data, but the process typically involves phases of sorting, categorizing, and coding for links and connections (Wetherell, Taylor, & Yates, 2001). We organized the data into a conceptual framework, constructed successively during the period of the observation (containing process complexity, and consisting of communication devices, changes made to proposals, etc.). The structure was complemented by, and adjusted with, new codes in relation to the empirical data. Based on this framework, we divided the different themes into sub-codes, and then performed cross-coding to identify connections and variations.

The basic data for analysis consisted of 1137 utterances (or ‘turns’) from the members of the CPCs, which contained at least one monitoring action. In total, 1,203 such actions were defined, covering one of six different aspects – professional conduct, and therapeutic, ecological, formal, legalistic, or economic aspects (see below for explanation) – 1,328 times. Consequently, a turn could include more than one monitoring action and cover more than one aspect. For example, a question could start with a statement and cover both a description of the work with the client, and legal issues. Utterances not included were procedural directives (e.g., opening and closing of a case), facilitating devices (e.g., ‘We are on page 53.’), and utterances requiring introspective analysis to be understood.

Further, we grouped different utterances connected to the same topic into a sequence, and used these to analyse both the context and function of the utterances, and how different ‘teams’ of actors worked together (Goffman, 1990). We coded the utterances in several ways. For example, monitoring actions (or devices) were coded as questions, statements, valuing remarks, demands, or proposals. When it was hard to define just one aspect of an utterance we coded this utterance as covering more than one aspect. A ‘decision process’ is understood as all utterances connected to the consideration of a case. These processes were analysed for complexity (e.g., How many utterances were there, and what was their content?). In the analysis of monitoring devices, we used a combination of data. Observational data gave indications as to what was seen as important issues together with verbal and non-verbal cues associated with the interaction. The interviews with the CPC members gave an idea about what the actors themselves saw as important, and the quantitative data from the national survey (Forkby et al., 2013) was also useful. Identifying the function of utterances is important because it is an immanent part of the communication that is often not directly articulated. To find out whether an utterance functioned as a question, one analytic strategy was to look for its effect and ‘consequentiality’ (Schegloff, 1991), meaning that we did not just analyse the verbal expression, but we also examined how talk was produced and how this affected the interaction. The language spoken by the CPCs is Swedish, which means that all quotations have been translated into English by the authors.

Results

The presentation of the results is preceded by information on the composition and structure of the CPCs. The main results concerning what characterizes the monitoring processes used during the CPC meetings are grouped under three sub-headings: process complexity; interplay and group-based actions; and decision-making topics and monitoring strategies. The next part focuses on ‘communication and influencing strategies’ and ends with an analysis of the CPC members’ use of questions (of governance).

All three CPCs were composed of a chairperson, a vice chairperson, and one (Mun C), three (Mun A), or six (Mun B) additional members who participated at the meetings. All had administrative support from a secretary. A number of officials at managerial level attended, to present the cases and answer questions; for example, the head of the social service department and line managers of the different units were involved. Where more detailed information was required, the responsible case worker could be called in.

The CPC members were normally able to prepare themselves before the meeting by reading the documentation (the investigations and care proposals). The exception was cases that called for urgent decisions. These were presented to the members and decided at the meeting. If a case had already been decided by the chairperson, he or she informed the members of this decision at the meeting. Before the formal meeting, the CPC members had a pre-meeting to identify unclear or problematic issues to be raised at the meeting, for example, issues demanding supplementary information from the case worker.

Process complexity

Four decision-making processes were defined based on complexity: simple, complemented, questioned and negotiated. Simple decision-making processes typically involved the chairperson introducing the case by its number on the agenda, then asking whether anyone had anything to say on the case. If the question was met with silence, these processes were then finalized by the chairperson asking if everyone present agreed on the proposal, and rapping the gavel. In complemented decision-making processes, some additional information was given aside from the investigation. This was mostly provided by an official following a CPC member’s request. Questioned decision-making processes contained a discussion or search for alternative care strategies in dealing with the case. Negotiated decision-making processes were the most complex type because they involved requests for alternative decisions or modification of the proposed care plan.

Because of the different sizes of the municipalities and organizations, the total of 250 cases was unequally distributed across Mun A, B and C (average number of cases discussed per meeting: Mun A: 15; Mun B: six; Mun C: three), as shown in Figure 1. The number of cases did not, however, directly reflect the time that the meetings took. An explanation for this could be that the length of a meeting depends on what has to be done – the greater the number of cases that are to be considered, the less time can be given to the individual case. While almost 40% of the 152 cases in Mun A were defined as simple, just under 7% of the 30 cases in Mun C fell into this category. In Mun C, the involved actors were much more inclined to give and ask for additional information than to rely on the child protection investigation only. This indicates somewhat different localized cultures of handling child protection cases. As a consequence, clients living in different municipalities can expect different decision processes concerning their cases.

Figure 1.

Decision-making processes (N = 250) in the 31 child protection committee (CPC) meetings observed.

This finding also indicates that the CPCs generally take a more active role in their decision making, involving more than just accepting or declining a suggestion (fewer than one-third of all processes were simple). They seek more information, pose questions, and make their standpoints clear during the decision-making processes. Therefore, even though there was no total rejection of a care proposal by any of the CPCs, and though changes of proposals were uncommon (see also Forkby, 2013), the CPCs readily used their decision-making power, if not to change the proposals, then at least to influence or question them in other ways.

Interplay and group-based actions

The interactions in the CPC consisted of conversations between the CPC members themselves, with the professionals, and sometimes (rarely) even with clients (five times out of 250 cases). The main interaction was organized by the chairperson and was in the form of an address from him or her (or another CPC member) to one specific person or, more openly, to a group of professionals functioning as the counterpart. In contrast to political assemblies, where party-based values and ideology delineate the proceedings, the CPC members mostly work as a team, often equipped with questions that are prepared and sanctioned in advance within their group.

There was some specialization in the group of CPC members. For example, in one of the CPCs, one member was specifically interested in educational issues and often posed questions about the children’s schooling. In another, one member was inclined to question the legal ground for the proposals. The other members accordingly reserved these questions for this person, and if they took another standpoint on these issues, they rarely argued their point, but instead let the responses come from the professionals/managers. The issues that tended to lead to more discussion varied between the CPCs. In one committee, there was strong opposition to compulsory care on several occasions, whereas this was never, or very seldom, expressed in the others (one example of differences between localized decision-making cultures):

I used to scrutinize these cases of compulsory care because I think that compulsory care uses a kind of coercive force that society should be very restricted in using. The process should be reversed as soon as possible. When I read this documentation, I do not see any reason for it to continue. (Vice chairperson, CPC, Mun B)

The extract shows how the vice chair makes an ideological statement about how he thinks compulsory care should be used (a statement often backed up by legal argumentation) and implies what this should mean for managing the case. We can also note the self-awareness of the individual specialization within the CPC when the chairperson says: ‘I used to scrutinize’. The issue is displayed as a personal responsibility, reflecting tasks and responsibilities.

The conversation structure in and between the sub-groups (CPC members vs. professionals/managers) did not always reflect the same divide of the system the actors referred to. The CPC members played what could be called a multiple role. Their main role was sometimes blurred, for example, when the relation to other authorities was questioned or when clients approached the committee. In these cases, the CPC members could leave their default position and join the professionals as an ‘in-group’, together representing the social services.

Decision-making topics and monitoring strategies

This study also aimed to investigate which topics or areas of interest arose in decision making and how these topics related to different monitoring strategies. The monitoring actions reflected several different topics or areas of interest. Six groups were defined, where the greatest part of (about one-third) the 1,328 identified aspects of monitoring actions had to do with the social workers’ professional conduct (here understood to mean how the social worker dealt with a case, including strategies for directly dealing with the client and indirectly dealing with other parties, and how this was presented to the CPC). About one-fourth had to do with therapeutic issues, meaning the CPC member asked for information or commented about the development and well-being of a certain child in relation to his or her care and associated needs. Fewer monitoring actions dealt with ecological issues, involving a broader view of the child’s context, such as relationships with and within the biological family if the child was placed in out-of-home care. Even more rare, formal issues that had to do with matters such as information recorded or lost in the investigation or time frames that should be kept; legalistic aspects, which dealt with legal issues such as the legal ground for different plans and interventions; and, finally, economic aspects that primarily focused on costs or finances for the proposed care, were covered in the remaining monitoring actions.

The considerations of the CPC members were mainly directly connected to the child, the support he or she was given, how he or she was developing, and what needs should be addressed. It is noteworthy that the CPC members focused least on financial issues. As shown in Figure 2, the greatest part of these considerations was expressed in questions, then statements, demands/proposals and lastly, valuing remarks. Questions are especially of interest here since their double function, both to serve as interrogatives asking for information and to imply for some actions to be taken or to make some kind of point. Thus, the questions are interesting both from a monitoring as well as from a governing point of view.

Figure 2.

Distribution of CPC members’ considerations by monitoring aspects (1,328) in relation to communication devices used.

Communication and influencing strategies

The interactions the CPC members engaged in can be seen, as communication with the persons present at the meeting. On the other hand, they can be viewed as messages sent to the wider group of professionals since what is considered is transferred, or rather translated, to them via their line managers (e.g., when they supervise the social workers in cases which are going to be presented to, and decided by, the CPC). Some demands and proposals of the communicative actions can easily be seen to have a direct governing aspect in that they urge a specific action. Others are indirect in the way that they do not directly demand or propose a specific action, but rather, request it indirectly by questioning, stating, or valuing positively or negatively. Hence, the CPC members’ communication can serve to assess or exert influence on the actual case using decision-making power in relation to the proposal. Also, it can more or less purposively influence the overall practice, both in a specific case and more generally – a device to govern mentality (Chambon, 1999).

The monitoring actions (1,203) of the communication at the CPCs were divided into six categories. The largest group (55%) consisted of questions and the next (29%) were statements. Demands, proposals, and negative and positive (valuing) remarks were also made, but much less frequently. It should be noted that a consideration of a case did not just contain one of these actions, but that the six types of actions were sometimes used in combination. The questions will be dealt with below in the section ‘Governing by questions’.

By statements is meant declaration of someone’s standpoint. As pointed out before, this could have to do with presenting a view on how compulsory care should be used, or on the importance of schooling in vulnerable children’s lives. By letting the social workers know what is important to the group or to an individual member, the CPCs can give the professionals an idea (a framework), from the start, of what is needed and what should be avoided in order to get a proposal through the CPC. They can then design the investigation/proposal accordingly. The following statement from a discussion about how to support unaccompanied, asylum-seeking young people serves as an example. It shows that a line manager was corrected when incorrectly assuming (having the wrong framework) that economic reasoning was at the forefront of the chairperson’s concerns:

Line manager: I think I heard a little bit of worry in your voice about the finances.

Chairperson: Yes.

Line manager: [We can get a reimbursement from] the Migration Board until [they are] 20 years old. After that, it stops.

Chairperson: Actually, I wasn’t worried about the finances. It was more about how we can help these young people have a reasonable chance to become integrated. That’s what I thought, not about money.

(Conversation: CPC, Mun C)

The quote shows the chairperson’s standpoint that money is really not the issue. Rather, it is the social needs of the young people that should be in focus. By doing this, the chairperson signals how the morals of the CPC and the social services should be constructed: in this case drawing on a humanitarian discourse about equality, showing that the individual’s social needs and human rights should stand above economic reasoning.

Demands and proposals from CPC members are devices used to control the work because through suggestion they push the social workers’ decision or action in a certain direction (different from the direction that has been suggested in the child protection investigation). It was not infrequent that the CPC members pointed out mistakes in formalities in the investigations, such as misspellings of names, wrong dates or addresses, etc. The following quote underlines the importance of getting the formalities correct:

I had a bad experience with this sort of thing. When it comes to dates and such things, they must add up. I can see it in my daily life that if they don’t it can become a misery. It may seem a mere trifle right now, but in the future you cannot be so sure. (CPC member, Mun B)

The message from the CPC member relates to a specific case, but clearly it is also a general caution. Social workers should be very cautious when it comes to formalities, because there may be future implications. From a governance perspective, these kinds of messages call for strict scrutiny, by the social manager, of the investigations before passing them on to the CPCs.

Valuing remarks can have a monitoring capacity since they give positive or negative feedback on the case (work). A reasonable consequence of giving this kind of feedback is that you would do more of the things you have been getting credit for, and fewer of the things that have been criticized. What was noticeable is that these value-based declarations were the least common among the monitoring devices, with positive remarks being the most infrequent. Therefore, giving valued feedback does not seem to be a central part of the CPC members’ role.

Governing by questions

As shown above, the CPC members acted in several ways to monitor the child protection cases presented to them, and posing questions was the most frequent and prominent of the devices used. Questions could provide information about a specific case, but also contextually, and could serve to strengthen the CPC members’ position and role by building up a more general knowledge base. Asking questions was in fact one of very few devices they recognized (from the interviews) as a powerful tool when it came to influencing the decisions and practice, and was a definable feature of their role. When looking at the more indirect dimensions of what the questions implied, we can see the governing aspects of the questioning. More than a third (266) of the questions (compared to one-fifth of the statements) had some governing function apart from monitoring. This can for example imply actions to be taken related to the case, more generally to the routines in the child protection agency, or indicate how relations between the CPC and the agency should work.

A common way of using questions to exert influence was reiteration. A CPC member who often poses questions about a child’s schooling underlines that this area is important, and makes the managers aware that the investigations should provide detailed information about this if they are to pass smoothly through the CPC. The managers may not have to worry about whether the CPCs will refuse a proposal, but their role and ‘face’ as professionals/managers is more challenged when much questioning is done. Another device that can be used in governing is exploratory questioning aiming at consideration of the practice more generally (e.g., How is it that you do this in these cases?), or using communication markers to appraise a situation or indicate how a question is to be understood.

Table 1 gives examples of implying questions, categorized by aspect of governance. The column on the right gives an interpretation of the questions, as well as the communication device used, and further indicates the committee member’s different beliefs regarding the quality of care.

Table 1.

Implying questions from representatives in child protection committees (CPCs).

Aspect of governance	Question	Interpretation
Professional conduct	How is it that we have this case today? Why are the girls not presented together? (CPC member, Mun A)	Reiteration of a question implying that cases of considerations of siblings placed in out-of-home care should be presented together at the same CPC meeting in order to give the siblings a sense of safety in knowing what is decided about each other.
Therapeutic aspect	I miss a little that you have not worked more with the school and her […]. What will happen to her if she is placed at an institution for three months, and then comes back again? Are they going to make her realize that she is in bad company, and that she has to change her life – or what will happen there? (CPC vice chair, Mun C)	Combination of statements and negative remarks on the case management, and therapeutic question about the possible outcome of a placement. The question indicates that institutions cannot contribute to solving the real problem (and implies that other interventions should be used).
Ecological aspect	I am wondering, it is obvious that he does not function at home, but there is nothing [in the investigation] about the school. So I wonder, does he function in other situations, such as in school? (CPC member, Mun A)	Reiteration that the investigations should contain information about how the child is doing in school – and also an indication that [collaboration] work should be done to help the child achieve in school.
Formal aspect	I had a question there, in this case I miss the care plan and I also did with case X: miss the care plan when it is compulsory treatment, and so on. (CPC member, Mun B)	Utterance (statement) or question implying that a care plan must be in place in order for the representatives to make decisions.
Economic aspect	How do you describe the support one is getting there? Because, if I speculate, this is SEK 600.000 a year. What kind of support could we provide if we built up something of our own? (CPC chair, Mun C)	Looking at the cost for a placement in residential care, the representative asks a contextual question implying that it would be cheaper (and possibly better) to keep the money and provide the service themselves.
Legalistic aspect	But the girl is let out of compulsory treatment; shouldn’t that be the guiding principle even if it [the case management] is getting more difficult? (CPC member, Mun B)	A case-related discussion about compulsory treatment, in which the representative asks a contextual question about how the legislation should be interpreted in practice, implying that this kind of treatment should be avoided.

Note. The table gives examples from 266 questions across six categories.

Discussion

The ambition to turn social work into a profession with professional status, which started in the 20th century, has led to significant results in some parts of the world (Pettersson, 2001). However, social workers are not fully acknowledged by other groups, as this study shows. When it comes to the discretion of professional social workers in Sweden, this is limited by laypersons in the role of politically appointed CPC members who hold one of the most important aspects of power – the decisional. Though they do not use this power often to decide against the social workers’ care proposals, they do use other strategies to influence the care plan. When governance is viewed as a process, rather than as static power relations (Pierre, 2011), communicative strategies both reflect power relations and serve to construct the norms of how governance is to be understood and (re)formulated.

The governance-related communication can be viewed as a kind of governmental strategy as it shapes the presumptions about what is desired from the social workers, and what is needed to let the proposal pass the committee as smoothly as possible. Therefore, even if the CPCs do not reject the proposals from the social worker, being criticized creates distrust and perhaps a sense of non-accomplishment, as was having to answer the same kind of questions again and again or to be confronted with statements about the best way to deal with a situation. This kind of steering, achieved by setting up a normative grid for ways to pass the committee, is sometimes directly controlled by the committee, but more often it is implied from the questions from, and statements and other utterances made by, the committee. Bengtsson (2011), in a study on political decision making, has called this an indirect governance strategy for anticipating management. The working mechanism is that the actors involved design their proposals and work in accordance with what they assume the group in power will accept. So to some extent, the mechanism is one of self-control based on expectations and standards, similar to mechanisms of (late) modern control reported elsewhere in studies on governmentality (Chambon et al., 1999; Rose & Miller, 1992).

An additional aspect to understanding the actions of the CPC members is that they have to perform a role. Since the representatives have the role of monitoring and making decisions on child protection cases, they must find a way to handle the task – just sitting quietly and agreeing with the proposals would perhaps be regarded as an irresponsible and neglectful behaviour. So they behave in accordance with what they perceive as their roles. This explanation does not, however, detract from the fact that they also actually govern the work and practices of social workers.

This study shows both similarities and differences between different committees with regard to what the CPC members are looking for and what aspects they are prioritizing in their review of cases. The differences show that there are localized cultures in the child protection sector in Sweden, which can be steered by an individual’s ideological positions. The monitoring by the CPC members and other communication strategies can be said to have the common goal of reaching justifiable decisions. These decisions are primarily motivated by the CPC members’ desire to meet requirements in terms of values, routines, and the assessment of the specific child’s needs. What is seen as justifiable, however, varies between individuals and different CPCs. For example, one of the committees debated and criticized the use of compulsory care. Members from that committee were willing to vote against, or give alternative standpoints to, the protocol. In the other committees, these objections never came up. And in one of the committees, school-related and educational issues were at the top of the discussions, whereas in the other committees, they received much less focus, and so on. This result is important in relation to the dilemma between, on the one hand, having decision making and support measures informed by the local circumstances, and, on the other hand, just and equal treatment in the welfare sector. What is shown here is that great variations exist in the processing of questions, not least in the most drastic interventions (compulsory care). This variation in this study is traced back to local actors in the role of laypersons taking decisions informed by their common sense as a main asset, and that individuals with strong beliefs can become a spokesperson on the groups’ behalf on that issue.

In a previous part of this project (Forkby et al., 2013), it was reported that the laypersons saw their common sense as their main asset in their decision making, but also that great trust was put into the professionals’ competence and bureaucratic regulations. Their main considerations, both expressed in the previous national survey and this observation study, were related to the protection and support of the individual child, for example, to safeguard that the child received the support he or she needed. The investigations and proposals from the professionals had great impact on their reasoning, as well as different organizational routines telling about the work in general. What these closer observations show is how they use their decisional power to monitor and govern the child protection, even if they very seldom vote against the proposals. As a consequence, governance of Swedish child protection takes place in a hybridized situation where professional, organizational, ideological and economic logics interplay. In some parts the control of balancing these logics is in the hands of laypersons using their common sense expressed in questions, statements and other communication strategies. This communication draws idiosyncratically on the laypersons’ own experience and personal views and values that strengthen the idea of social work as moral work (Hasenfeld, 2010). As shown previously in the project, the CPCs’ decision making is to some extent also influenced by their general political standpoints. Together with the fact that the CPC members are well represented at local governmental boards in their municipalities (Forkby et al., 2013), this study underlines the character of social work as also political and ideological.

One possible explanation as to why social work in Sweden is directly and indirectly monitored by laypersons could be mistrust of social workers’ professional competence, meaning that they have to be controlled and helped by laypersons. Historically in child welfare practice, there have been abuses of, and injustices towards, vulnerable groups, sometimes legitimized in the name of therapeutic benefit, or of moral pedagogics (SOU, 2009). Laypersons in the role of politically appointed CPC members are in this sense put in place to protect individuals against misconduct from professionals. This can perhaps be seen as a way to contribute to the legitimacy of child protection in the public’s view.

Another explanation could relate to finance; even if in our study, financially motivated monitoring actions were few compared to others. Each placement in residential care costs a great amount of money, especially for smaller municipalities; one placement could mean the difference between a positive or a negative bank balance. A third way to explain the involvement by laypersons has nothing to do with distrust of professionals. Rather, it underlines the importance of social work, so important that politicians and laypersons need to learn about the practice, and should be tasked with helping and working along with the professionals to alleviate the life conditions of children in care, and perhaps bring about a more profound change to the structures that lead to social problems. And then again, all these explanations, and others, could work in conjunction with each other (Bengtsson & Karlsson, 2012).

Footnotes

Funding

This work was supported by a CIHR Emerging Team Grant to M.B.; R.K. was supported by CIHR-Banting Fellowship.

Conflict of interest

The authors do not have any potential conflicts of interest to declare.

Notes

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