“They’re not bad parents. They’ve just made bad choices.”: Mental health clinicians’ perspectives of parents involved with child protective services

Abstract

Although psychotherapeutic treatment (e.g., counseling and therapy) is often offered to clients involved with child protective services (CPS), the existing literature includes few voices of mental health clinicians regarding their work and clients in the child welfare system. The current study seeks to address this gap by exploring clinicians’ views on the issue of child maltreatment and CPS-involved parents’ parenting. Thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews revealed that clinicians acknowledged the strengths of CPS-involved parents as well as the challenges that may have made their parenting difficult. For strengths, clinicians identified parents’ desire to care for their child, motivation to improve their parenting, and commitment to their child. Identified challenges included a lack of parenting knowledge, substance use, and limited resources and support. Overall, clinicians in this study presented a balanced perspective that attended to both the “good” and the “bad” in their clients’ parenting. They viewed CPS-involved parents as more than the sum of their problematic parenting behaviors and understood incidents of child maltreatment within the parents’ contexts. At the same time, their interviews noted that a variety of individual and sociostructural challenges faced by CPS-involved parents must be addressed in order to resolve child maltreatment and prevent parents’ repeated involvement in the child protection system.

Keywords

Child maltreatment parents in the child protection system mental health clinicians counselors therapists

Introduction

According to recent national data of the U.S., child protective services (CPS) agencies investigated and responded to child maltreatment cases involving approximately 3.5 million children in 2018, with the majority (77.5%) of perpetrators being identified as the victims’ parents (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services [USDHHS], 2020). Given the high rate of parental involvement in child abuse/neglect, CPS intervention in the U.S. has aimed to meet parents’ needs, including material/financial resources, child daycare, and community support (Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2006; USDHHS, 2020). In addition, mental health services (e.g., counseling and therapy) are often included in CPS service plans, with the purpose of resolving parents’ psychological or relational issues that may have impaired their parenting abilities (Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2006; Westat, Inc., 2009).

While the benefit of mental health services for CPS-involved parents has been suggested (Lietz, 2009; Staudt and Massengale, 2015), there is a dearth of research on such services in the child welfare literature. In particular, little is known about mental health clinicians’ perspectives on child abuse/neglect cases, compared to the amount of knowledge regarding child welfare workers’ and CPS-involved families’ perspectives (Colvin and Thompson, 2020). This raises concern in that mental health clinicians’ voices are needed to facilitate effective collaboration between child protection and mental health services (Darlington and Feeney, 2008; Sheehan, 2004). Considering the therapeutic nature of their services, clinicians’ perspectives have the potential to provide unique insight about child welfare cases, as they have access to clients’ personal accounts that may not be shared in other service settings. The current study seeks to address this gap in the literature by exploring the ways in which mental health clinicians (e.g., counselors and therapists) view the issue of child maltreatment and CPS-involved parents’ parenting.

CPS-involved parents and their parenting

Traditionally, child welfare practice has leaned toward an approach that focuses on addressing deficits and risks that may contribute to the occurrence of child abuse/neglect. The dominant discourse about CPS-involved families reflects this, given the amount of studies on various risk factors for undesirable parenting. With regard to sociostructural factors, the likelihood of child maltreatment and CPS involvement tends to be higher among parents residing in marginalized neighborhoods where poverty, crime, and limited community support are commonly experienced (Fong, 2019; McLeigh et al., 2018). Such stressors may also increase the risks for child maltreatment through indirect pathways, with these parents experiencing heightened levels of mental health deterioration (Mistry et al., 2002; Newland et al., 2013) and interparental violence (McTavish et al., 2016). The issue of child maltreatment, therefore, is often complicated by family- and community-level factors, and its resolution may not come easily. Not only is the recidivism rate of child abuse/neglect high among families with sociostructural challenges (Proctor et al., 2012), but the impact of child maltreatment also tends to endure for generations within a family, manifested in multiple forms of domestic violence (Wareham et al., 2009).

While these challenges warrant significant attention, more recent trends in social work practice have stressed the importance of identifying and utilizing the strengths of at-risk families in resolving their presenting issues (Saleebey, 1996, 2013). Consistent with this shift in perspective, child welfare research has given increased attention to the capabilities and potential of CPS-involved parents that could contribute to the resolution of child maltreatment. Several qualitative investigations have suggested that CPS-involved parents may have a desire to care for their children in the best possible ways. Despite allegations of child maltreatment, these parents believed that they had pursued their children’s best interests and ensured their safety through difficult situations (Bundy-Fazioli and DeLong Hamilton, 2013; Sykes, 2011). Many who had suffered childhood abuse/neglect themselves also expressed a desire to not repeat child maltreatment in their current families, as they wished their children to have better upbringings than their own (McWey et al., 2013). Furthermore, prior studies have noted CPS-involved parents’ strong commitment to their children. Although CPS involvement was likely perceived as stressful, some parents were open to receiving services when convinced that CPS intervention could benefit their children and families (Bolen et al., 2008; Maiter and Stalker, 2011). Parents who were reunified with their children after CPS involvement and maintained custody post reunification identified “family commitment” as an important strength that made their success possible (Lietz and Strength, 2011).

Child welfare service providers’ perspectives

Child welfare service providers’ views play an important role in the decision-making process for CPS outcomes, including those regarding children’s removal from the home. The extant literature, however, lacks studies on CPS service providers’ perspectives of their clients. In particular, their views of CPS-involved parents’ strengths are relatively understudied, compared to parents’ reflections of their own strengths. The majority of existing studies discuss service providers’ assessments of CPS-involved parents’ risk factors for child maltreatment, such as financial stress, mental health issues, substance abuse, domestic violence, and social isolation (Berger et al., 2010; Bérubé et al., 2017; Darlington et al., 2010; Devaney, 2008). In practice, child welfare workers may also find it challenging to implement strengths-based approaches due to the urgent nature of child abuse/neglect and their responsibility to prioritize child protection (Saint-Jacques et al., 2009). Although research suggests the effectiveness of strengths-based practice models, such as Solution-Based Casework (SBC) (Antle et al., 2012), workers might question the applicability of such models and view strengths-based practice as incompatible with their statutory job (Oliver and Charles, 2015).

Another area that warrants further investigation is mental health clinicians’ perspectives of CPS clients and their presenting issues. These professionals often provide CPS-involved parents with counseling and therapy services (Estefan et al., 2012), assisting them in gaining a sense of safety and support, motivation for change, and problem resolution skills (Yoo et al., 2020). However, their voices have received significantly less research attention than those of child welfare workers and clients (Colvin and Thompson, 2020). Although clinicians treating CPS clients work toward resolving child maltreatment like other CPS professionals do, their services are therapeutic in nature and thus grant them access to clients’ personal accounts of their life experiences, values behind their parenting choices, and perceptions of their current CPS involvement. Clinicians’ perspectives, therefore, could provide information that may not be easily recognized in other service settings and contribute to a fuller understanding of CPS-involved parents and their parenting.

The present study

The current study seeks to expand the child welfare literature by exploring the perspectives of mental health clinicians working with families involved with CPS. Specifically, this study focuses on licensed counselors and therapists whose clients include parents with allegations of child abuse and/or neglect. Using interview data, this qualitative investigation explores how counselors and therapists view the issue of child maltreatment and CPS-involved parents’ parenting.

Methods

Participants

Participants were recruited by posting advertisement flyers at local child welfare agencies in a suburban area of a large city in Illinois. To meet eligibility criteria, individuals had to be mental health clinicians with experience providing individual and/or conjoint counseling/therapy services for CPS-involved parents. Those interested in participating contacted the researchers directly through the contact information on the flyer. Ten of those individuals were confirmed to be eligible and comprised this study’s sample. Their participation was completely voluntary.

All participants identified themselves as mental health clinicians practicing under state licensure. They reported having received master’s degrees in marriage and family therapy (n = 3), counseling (n = 3), social work (n = 3), and clinical psychology (n = 1). At the time of data collection, they were 43.5 years old on average and had worked with child welfare cases for an average of 5.25 years. Types of services provided included individual and/or conjoint counseling/therapy (e.g., family therapy), parenting coaching/mentoring, domestic violence interventions, and community support. Nine of ten clinicians identified as female. In terms of their racial and ethnic identities, eight identified as White and two as Hispanic.

Data collection

The Institutional Review Board (IRB) of each applicable institution and agency approved this study’s procedures. After obtaining informed consent, the researcher (first author) collected basic demographic information and conducted semi-structured interviews that were audio-recorded for later analysis. Interviews explored four areas: 1) clinicians’ descriptions of their services and how their treatment helps resolve child maltreatment issues, 2) their assessments of clinician-client dynamics in counseling/therapy, 3) their reflections on their work and clients in the CPS system, and 4) their suggestions and feedback for child welfare interventions. The data presented in this study primarily pertain to the first and third areas, with a specific focus on the issue of child maltreatment and clients’ parenting. Examples of interview questions include: “What is your understanding of the issue of child maltreatment?” and “What are your perspectives on your clients’ parenting?” Interviews lasted 58.1 minutes on average (range 40–72 min).

Data analysis

Two researchers (first and second authors) analyzed the interview data using thematic analysis, based on the guidelines suggested by Clarke and Braun (2013). The researchers first read the transcripts multiple times to become familiar with the data, then conducted initial coding while attending to content relevant to their research foci. Themes were generated based on the identified codes, which were then organized into each theme. The researchers explored relationships between the themes and identified superordinate as well as subordinate themes. For each step of the process, researchers analyzed the data independently and then together. Any discrepancies in analysis outcomes were discussed and resolved. The final analysis results were summarized in a thematic map that served as an outline for the entirety of the data.

Efforts were made to ensure the rigor and credibility of the data analysis outcomes. The researchers documented each step in audit trails, which were reviewed by an external auditor who provided guidance from the outset of this study (see White et al., 2012). The researchers also actively engaged with reflexivity practices by monitoring their personal and professional positions on the subject of child maltreatment as well as their reactions to the interviews (see Finlay, 2002). Lastly, the researchers kept the raw interview data in mind throughout the process to ensure that the analysis outcomes were consistent with participants’ responses. This also allowed for recursive analysis in that the thematic framework established by the researchers was continually evaluated against the raw data and revised as needed.

Results

Thematic analysis of the interview data revealed mental health clinicians’ perspectives of parents involved in the child protection system, specifically in terms of their strengths and challenges for parenting. Overall, clinicians in this study did not define CPS-involved parents based on substandard parenting behaviors alone, nor did they underestimate those behaviors. Both “good” aspects (strengths) and “bad” aspects (challenges) were discussed during interviews. As one clinician succinctly stated, “They’re not bad parents. They’ve just made bad choices.”

Parents’ strengths: Potential and capacity for care

Clinicians opposed the notion that CPS-involved parents are inherently “bad” and noted that these parents possess strengths that could potentially benefit their children. Regarding their strengths for parenting, three themes were identified: 1) desire to care for child; 2) motivation to improve parenting; and 3) commitment to child.

Desire to care for child

Based on their experiences with child welfare cases, clinicians in this study believed that CPS-involved parents desire to optimally provide and care for their children. Although these parents had engaged in undesirable parenting behaviors, clinicians did not consider this to negate their intention to pursue their children’s best interests. In particular, clinicians shared that providing one’s children with a better upbringing than one’s own was often an important goal for parents with difficult childhood experiences. As one clinician said:

Clinician 10: We take those individuals who already carry the shame and guilt of their own childhood. And then they’re parents, and they’re wanting something different [for their children] … I don’t believe that parents go into parenting wanting to mess up, wanting to ineffectively parent and harm their children.

Related to this, clinicians shared that they do not view parents’ allegations of child maltreatment as indicators of character flaws or a lack of parenting instincts. One clinician, noting the relevance of contextual factors to parenting, cautioned against overlooking parents’ desire and efforts to overcome challenges for the sake of their children’s well-being. This clinician, in her work with CPS cases, reported helping parents hold on to positive parent identities that may have been overshadowed by the ramifications of their hardships:

Clinician 7: I never see a mom who comes in here as a bad mom. I just see that there’s been an unfortunate set of circumstances that got off track here … ‘You’re a good person. You love your child. You want your child back.’

Motivation to improve parenting

Clinicians mentioned that although some parents may complete CPS requirements solely to avoid foster care placement, some are genuinely motivated to improve their parenting for the sake of their children. One clinician said that most of the parents she has worked with show interest in the topic of parenting, which she interprets as their desire to grow as parents:

Clinician 4: I’d say the majority [of the parents], once we get to the point of talking about parenting, they’re open to learning more about parenting, which kind of surprises me.

Another clinician shared that some parents see counseling/therapy as an opportunity to learn how to make constructive changes in their lives, including in parenting. As parents acknowledge their areas for growth, they may participate in psychotherapy services more willingly because they want to make things better for themselves and their children:

Clinician 7: Some clients I’ve worked with are really okay about [receiving therapy] because they want to learn how to change. There are those that really get the idea of having a better life for themselves and their children, and they want to know how to get there.

These motivated parents were described as curious, insightful, and active in counseling/therapy sessions. Clinicians appreciated parents’ involvement in the change process and viewed it as a valuable resource for positive treatment outcomes, including the successful resolution of child maltreatment:

Clinician 10: They are the ones that are asking questions and wanting to learn more themselves. They just come with more insight naturally, so it’s easier to break through some of the issues that are already happening.

Commitment to child

Lastly, CPS-involved parents’ strong sense of commitment to their children was identified as a factor that could increase resiliency when facing various hardships. Though these parents may not have much, they still “find ways to meet their children’s needs in very creative ways,” according to one clinician. Another clinician elaborated on how her clients have persevered through difficulty and managed to provide for their children:

Clinician 2: The parents are some of the most resilient people I’ve ever met in my life. I work with mostly low-income families, so they’re usually living below the poverty line. It’s not uncommon for [them] to be working two or three jobs to provide for their children.

Furthermore, clinicians identified commitment as being demonstrated by how parents strive to comply with CPS requirements, even when they disagree with the maltreatment allegations. It was noted that losing direct care of children and failure to achieve reunification are often parents’ greatest fears, which motivate them to comply with CPS services:

Clinician 2: Even if something is mandated, you can choose to say, “I’m not gonna [receive services].” … I mean, no one can ultimately force you to do anything. [But] they are still choosing to come in, which I think says a lot about their commitment to their child.

Clinician 4: They do want their child back, [and] that’s the biggest motivation for them. So they’re like, ‘Tell me what to do. Help me be a better parent so I can get my child back.’

Given that many of their clients are under-resourced, clinicians acknowledged that it is not always easy for parents to complete CPS requirements. One clinician shared that she was impressed by parents’ determination to attend therapy sessions, even when external circumstances made it difficult to do so:

Clinician 7: How many sacrifices that those moms make to come to therapy is amazing. Some of them could leave hours before coming to therapy because they have to get a bus [and] wait for the next bus. The whole thing may take four hours just to come to therapy, but they did it every week … I’ve had people come in [when] there’re horrible rainstorms, waiting outside for the bus or having to walk to get to therapy, because they want to get their child back.

In sum, clinicians in this study demonstrated knowledge of CPS-involved parents’ strengths for parenting. Although these parents became involved with CPS due to their undesirable parenting behaviors, clinicians seemed to not define them by their “problems” alone. Rather, they viewed them as having the capacity for care and the potential to make improvements in parenting.

Parents’ challenges: Reasons behind maltreatment

Having noted the aforementioned strengths, clinicians shared how they make sense of the issue of child maltreatment, given the parents’ positive qualities. They viewed child maltreatment as being related to various factors in the parents’ lives, including: 1) lack of parenting knowledge; 2) substance use; and 3) limited resources and support.

Lack of parenting knowledge

Clinicians noted that parents express a desire to be good caregivers but often do not know how. Specifically, parents may lack knowledge of what their children are communicating by acting out and thus be unable to respond effectively. As one clinician stated, “They don’t always know what their children need, and they don’t always understand why their children are acting the way they do.”

Interestingly, many clinicians attributed parents’ lack of parenting knowledge to their difficult upbringings, suggesting that one’s family of origin is a formative place for gathering such knowledge. Instead of blaming parents for not knowing how to parent effectively, the clinicians considered how these parents were raised without a role model for parenting and thus could only learn from their own parents’ undesirable parenting:

Clinician 2: Sometimes they will say “Well, I was raised where my parent used a belt” or something like that. So [their own parenting practice] doesn’t necessarily compute in their mind as something that is seen as abuse.

Clinician 3: The parents never learned healthy parenting skills growing up because their parents didn’t model it to them. So now they think this is just normal, and they think hitting their child is just how parents are supposed to be. So it can be kind of a family history thing that they never learned [how to parent] differently.

For this reason, clinicians in this study argued that maltreatment incidents should not be assumed to result from parents’ lack of care for their children. Rather, maltreatment could be unintentional or result from parents’ intention to discipline their children in ways they view as acceptable and effective. As one clinician shared, many parents wished they had known that their parenting practices were problematic before the maltreatment occurred:

Clinician 6: Many have told me, “I never even knew that. I wish somebody would’ve told me this a long time ago. I always just got a whupping. I didn’t know any better.”

Substance use

Clinicians also identified parents’ mental health issues as a risk factor for maltreatment. Of those, they particularly noted the implications of parents’ substance use for child maltreatment. They viewed drugs as temporarily “helping” parents manage their stress but ultimately threatening their children’s safety by impairing their supervision abilities. One clinician shared that substance use makes it particularly difficult for parents to be fully present with their children:

Clinician 6: With substance use, they would often have the allegation of inadequate supervision … they weren’t able to be present and supervise their children and care for them because they were under the influence.

In addition, clinicians identified unique difficulties in working with cases involving parents’ substance use. They noted that child maltreatment is difficult to resolve in such cases due to the addictive nature of drugs. One clinician said that, unfortunately, those parents are likely to relapse, even after successful completion of CPS requirements and reunification with their children:

Clinician 8: The recidivism … the opioid users start using opioids again. The person was clean for a year or two, got the child back, and then a year later fell off the wagon and used opioids again.

Another difficulty is these parents’ avoidance of responsibility for their undesirable parenting. Clinicians suggested that substance-using parents are often unable to own up to their part in the maltreatment incidents:

Clinician 8: Those clients are more likely to not have a full awareness of what they’ve done and their role in it. Oftentimes, those people are less likely to take personal responsibility for their role in what has happened.

Even when acknowledging their problematic parenting behaviors, parents may blame substances for the behaviors and plead helplessness. As one clinician elaborated:

Clinician 6: The ones with substance abuse issues knew they were being neglectful or abusive, but in the moment, they said, ‘I just couldn’t control it, I couldn’t do anything otherwise. I did the best I could in the moment.’

Limited resources and support

The relevance of sociostructural factors for parenting was also discussed during interviews. Noting that their clients are often under-resourced, clinicians emphasized that many parents feel significant stress to make ends meet and thus have little bandwidth to be patient with their children:

Clinician 2: When parents are exhausted and on a short fuse because they are working three jobs, and living in a very small house that’s not conducive to the amount of children they have, life is really hard, you know.

Clinician 3: If there are big stressors like job loss and money issues, those things can impact how the parent is with the child. The parent may have a shorter fuse, may blow up and get angry easier, because they are already under a lot of stress. Also, if the parent doesn’t have a lot of resources available, that can be another reason [for maltreatment].

In addition to having limited material resources, parents may also lack relational support. Most clients have no one to rely on for help, and only a few “lucky ones” have some system of support, according to the clinicians. Given the prevalence of financial struggles among this population, clinicians thought that the lack of social support might cause a “catch-22” for them. It may be that some parents must work to provide for their children, but because they cannot afford childcare or find a babysitter, such work requires their children to be home alone:

Clinician 6: As far as the neglect and leaving [children] alone, many say “I had no other options. I have no help.” I had one [mother] who would leave her children locked in her apartment because she had to go work midnights because she had no options, no childcare.

Even when parents are raising children with their spouses/partners, their relationships may not be supportive. Clinicians often described their clients’ couple/marital relationships as “not healthy” and as “creating stress in the home environment, which therefore increases the chances of the child abuse happening.” In worse cases, their relationships may become aggressive and expose their children to interparental violence:

Clinician 7: In domestic violence situations, it would be more of a trauma, chaotic-filled dynamic that they’re living in … and the kids are witnessing [interparental] violence.

Clinician 9: Domestic violence amongst the couple for sure … I’ve had quite a few kids who have witnessed domestic violence.

Overall, clinicians in this study found that the undesirable parenting practices of CPS-involved parents were linked to personal, familial/relational, and sociostructural challenges. The ramifications of such challenges could be so influential that parents’ strengths for parenting – their desire, motivation, and commitment – might not be enough to prevent child maltreatment. Clinicians further cautioned that, even after change is initiated, it may be hard to maintain the change. Parents may respond well to interventions while in CPS but easily “go back to their bad habits that they have done their whole lives” when they return to their typical routine and “old patterns start coming back up.”

Discussion

This study aimed to explore the perspectives of mental health clinicians who work with child welfare cases. The findings not only confirmed existing knowledge in the literature but also demonstrated how counselors/therapists conceptualize child maltreatment and perceive their clients’ parenting. Overall, clinicians in this study attended to parents’ strengths as well as challenges, presenting a more balanced and holistic view. At the same time, their perspectives proposed potential explanations for why these parents may utilize undesirable parenting practices despite their strengths.

“They’re not bad parents. They’ve just made bad choices.”

Clinicians in this study acknowledged CPS-involved parents’ challenges for parenting, but they did not define the parents’ parenthood solely based on such challenges. Rather, they believed that it is the undesirable parenting choices that are “bad,” not the parents themselves. Though currently involved with CPS, the parents were still given credit for their parenting strengths, including pursuing their children’s best interests, wanting to improve their parenting for their children’s well-being, and being highly devoted to retaining parental rights. These identified strengths are consistent with CPS-involved parents’ self-identified strengths as demonstrated in prior studies, which include their efforts to care for their children (Bundy-Fazioli and DeLong Hamilton, 2013; Sykes, 2011), their desire to improve their parenting (Bolen et al., 2008), and their resilience and commitment to their family’s togetherness (Lietz and Strength, 2011). Although the social stigma of child maltreatment may quickly define CPS-involved parents’ parenthood by their deficits, clinicians in this study did not do so and instead recognized positive parenting qualities which the parents also identified for themselves.

That clinicians in this study did not view their clients as the problem and instead recognized their strengths is encouraging, given that current practice continues to lack positive views on CPS-involved families and often remains deficit-focused. Research documents that child protection workers, while acknowledging the value of strengths-based practice, tend to focus on families’ risks due to the urgency of problem resolution (Arbeiter and Toros, 2017; Saint-Jacques et al., 2009), with some even wondering if strengths-based approaches could hinder their job of properly addressing risks for child maltreatment (Oliver and Charles, 2015). Possibly for this reason, CPS-involved parents report feeling stressed about service providers’ negative and biased views of them that overlook the positive aspects of their parenting (Haight et al., 2017). They want their strengths to be recognized (Lietz, 2011) and, when that happens, feel empowered and more willing to engage in services (Schreiber et al., 2013). Although it remains unknown how this study’s clinicians integrated their knowledge into practice, their affirmation of CPS-involved parents’ strengths may have contributed to the parents’ increased engagement with their services, as suggested in the literature (Kemp et al., 2014).

It is worth noting that this study’s findings on parents’ strengths, though promising, may add knowledge that seems inconsistent with how these parents have been presented in the literature. For example, some clinicians’ perspectives in this study suggested CPS-involved parents’ motivation and readiness to make changes, whereas previous studies have often been concerned about parents’ resistance to change (Forrester et al., 2012) and barriers to service engagement (Kemp et al., 2009). Parents’ desire to care for their children – one of the strengths identified in this study – was also mentioned in previous literature as potentially hindering the change process when parents view their parenting practices as better than others’ suggestions (Bundy-Fazioli and DeLong Hamilton, 2013). While this study has limited capacity to explain this discrepancy, it could be partly attributed to the fact that the current study’s informants are counselors and therapists whose perspectives may be influenced by the therapeutic nature of their work. Since parents perceive counseling/therapy as a source of support (Yoo et al., 2020), they may be more willing to listen to their counselors/therapists than to other CPS professionals and thus be viewed as more motivated in counseling/therapy than in other service settings.

The disconnect between strengths and undesirable parenting

While clinicians in this study acknowledged CPS-involved parents’ strengths, they did not take these parents’ allegations of maltreatment lightly or underestimate the need for change. Rather, clinicians recognized that parents’ strengths may not automatically lead to appropriate and effective parenting, especially given their life situations and challenges. They specifically noted that some parents may not understand why their parenting can be problematic, that substance use can impair their parenting abilities, and that their lack of material and relational resources can make their parenting more difficult.

According to clinicians in this study, such challenges are likely attributed to parents’ social and environmental contexts; therefore, the issue of child maltreatment cannot be fully understood without taking these contextual factors into account. For example, CPS-involved parents’ lack of parenting knowledge was understood in relation to their childhood upbringings. The literature has consistently documented that parents with allegations of child abuse/neglect often report being childhood victims of maltreatment themselves, suggesting the intergenerational transmission of this phenomenon (Bartlett et al., 2017; Kim, 2009). Therefore, as clinicians noted, it may not be uncommon for CPS-involved parents to have been raised in families where they lacked the opportunity to gain appropriate parenting knowledge. Similarly, clinicians understood how parents’ experiences of financial struggles and limited social support could lead to child maltreatment incidents, which is in line with previous research findings (Fong, 2019; McLeigh et al., 2018). When parents are the sole breadwinners of the household and are unable to afford appropriate childcare, they may have to choose between working to meet their child’s basic needs or staying home with their child (as shared by Clinician 6).

Given their understanding of the complexity of child maltreatment, clinicians noted that it is not easy to resolve it, and that changes are hard to maintain long-term. Even if parents respond well to CPS services designed to address their challenges, their “old patterns” and “habits” may still be present. This suggests the need to provide this population with more systemic and continuous care, including assistance after CPS involvement. As prior research proposes, ongoing support from child welfare service providers could benefit families after reunification and prevent their re-involvement with the child protection system (Balsells et al., 2015; Lietz and Strength, 2011).

Another issue of note pertains to clinicians’ reported difficulty in working with cases involving parents’ substance use due to their avoidance and denial. Previous studies suggest that non-clinical child welfare service providers recognize such difficulty as well (Taylor and Kroll, 2004), and that they view resolving substance-using parents’ risks as requiring more time and intentional support (Jedwab et al., 2018). Yet, neither prior literature nor the current study provides sufficient information about how child welfare service providers attend to these parents’ strengths in addressing issues related to maltreatment. Future research should consider exploring substance-using parents’ capacities for problem resolution and the ways in which these parents would respond to strengths-based child welfare practice.

Limitations and suggestions for future research

In considering the findings of this study, several limitations should be noted. First, clinicians in this study came from different disciplines, ranging from social work to marriage and family therapy. Although they all held state-level licensure, it is possible that the differential emphasis of each discipline, whether it be helping clients receive social services or improve familial relationships, affected their perspectives as clinicians. Second, clinicians’ caseloads included families who had retained custody of their children as well as those who had not. Therefore, it is unknown whether their perspectives applied to both types of cases or to one over the other. This limitation could have been mitigated if this study had explored how clinicians’ experiences differed in working with these respective clienteles. Third, this study is considered to be a small thematic analysis investigation, with the sample comprising ten participants (see Braun and Clarke, 2013). Future thematic analysis projects with a broader scope than that of the current study may need to recruit a larger number of participants in order to ensure that themes are based on the sufficient identification of patterns found across the data. Lastly, the majority of the participants were female, and their interviews tended to focus on their work with mothers. Thus, this study’s findings provide limited implications for male clinicians’ perspectives or the experiences of CPS-involved fathers whose parenting role may be viewed as “secondary” in society. More research attention is needed to explore the role of service providers’ and parents’ genders for the way that the child welfare system is experienced.

Conclusion

Mental health clinicians’ perspectives shared in this study suggest that, in their opinions, CPS-involved parents are more than the sum of their “problems.” Though struggling in parenting, they may still have the potential to resolve their presenting issues in collaboration with CPS intervention. In addition, child maltreatment may result from the interplay between various factors in parents’ lives, including those beyond their control. While the value of considering CPS-involved parents’ strengths and contexts has been acknowledged, this study is one of few that demonstrates clinicians’ views on those topics. The findings suggest that clinicians’ perspectives can contribute to a more holistic assessment of and intervention for child welfare cases as they collaborate with other service providers to work toward children’s safety and families’ well-being.

Footnotes

Author(s) Note

Stefana Racorean, MA, is currently affiliated with Doctoral School in Theology and Religious Studies at University of Bucharest (G-ral Berthelot Street, no. 19, Sector 1, Bucharest 010164, Romania).

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study was supported by G. W. Aldeen Memorial Fund (#240260-2020-72265-130) at Wheaton College (Wheaton, IL, USA).

ORCID iD

Hana Yoo

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