BJSW Advance Access originally published online on August 1, 2005
British Journal of Social Work 2005 35(6):901-920; doi:10.1093/bjsw/bch281
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When and How Does Ethnicity Matter? A Cross-National Study of Social Work Responses to Ethnicity in Child Protection Cases
Dr Charlotte Williams is a Senior Lecturer in Social Policy/Social Work at the University of Wales Bangor. She has written and researched widely on issues of ethnic minority participation in welfare including co-editing the text with Haluk Soydan, Social Work and Minorities in Europe (1998), London, Routledge.
Haluk Soydan, Ph.D. is Professor of Social Work and Research Director at the National Board of Health and Welfare in Stockholm, Sweden. He is author of a large number of publications. In 2003, one of his articles was awarded the Pro Humanitate Literary Award for ‘intellectual integrity and moral courage required to transcend political and social barriers to promote "best practice" in the field of child welfare’ by the North American Resource Centre for Child Welfare.
It is an established part of the conventional wisdom of social work theory and practice that attention to ethnic difference is at the core of best practice. This principle is endorsed in welfare legislation or in the training and education of social workers in most European countries. Little empirical evidence exists, however, to demonstrate that this principle guides practitioner decision making, or to verify the claim that it benefits ethnic minority clients. At a cross-national level, no robust evidence exists to illustrate similarities or differences in social work response to ethnicity. This article reports on aspects of a study that examines these concerns within the context of child protection. It demonstrates, perhaps surprisingly given national variations in legislation and professional practice, that overall, country by country, the child’s ethnic affiliation evokes little significant response by social workers, confirming a largely universalist approach. However, through a detailed focus on the qualitative data, this paper considers the nature of the references to ethnicity that are made by social workers in terms of how they confirm or refute the dominant approach to multiculturalism within social work.
Keywords: child protection, ethnicity, professional judgements, social work practice, vignette study
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