Parental engagement in child protection assessment: A qualitative analysis of worker and parent perspectives

Abstract

Drawing on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with a sample of 11 child protection workers and 11 parents in southern Estonia, this article reports the findings of participants’ experiences of and perspectives on parental engagement in the context of child protection assessment. The four themes that emerge from the content analysis suggest that participants’ perspectives differ in understanding and experiencing the engagement. Workers perceive the engagement more in terms of ‘doing for’ the client, while parents consider it ‘doing together with’ the worker. Furthermore, workers’ approaches are excessively related to the deficit-based approach.