Immigrant Parents’ Experiences of Child Welfare Assessment Processes in Child Maltreatment Cases: Implications for Trust

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to contribute to an in-depth understanding of how immigrant parents’ experiences of the child welfare assessment process shape their trust in the Norwegian child welfare services (CWS). The study is based on qualitative data generated through semi-structured interviews with six immigrant parents who have previous or ongoing contact with the CWS. The study finds that the parents’ experiences of the child welfare assessment process influence their trust in the CWS in a variety of ways, with the central themes being: (1) interactions with child welfare workers; (2) transparency and (un)predictability of the process and outcome; and (3) the risk-oriented, problem-focused and adversarial nature of the assessments. Whilst the parents’ positive experiences of the assessment process are associated with trust, their ambivalent and negative experiences are related to mistrust and distrust in the services respectively.

Keywords

• immigrant parents
• child welfare assessment
• child maltreatment
• lived experiences
• trust