Changes to assessments of child well-being brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic – Finnish family services and child welfare services supervisors’ perspective

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted social work practices, given limitations to practitioners’ possibilities to meet with clients face-to-face since spring 2020. In this article, we examine the kinds of changes the COVID-19 pandemic brought about in relation to assessment practices in Finnish family and child welfare services. Collected in 2021 and 2022, data consist of 17 interviews with supervisors who work in family and child welfare services and who are responsible for organising the assessment of children’s well-being. To analyse the data, we employed a thematic analysis. As a result of our study, we identified and named three different themes to describe changes to practices from different perspectives. These themes are moving to remote communication, delays in the availability of social and health services and assessment deadlines as well as the challenges of conducting assessments.

TIIVISTELMÄ

COVID-19 pandemia vaikutti sosiaalityön käytäntöihin muun muuassa siksi, että kasvokkaisia tapaamisia asiakkaiden kanssa rajoitettiin keväästä 2020 alkaen. Tässä artikkelissa tarkastelemme sitä, millaisia muutoksia COVID-19-pandemia on aiheuttanut lapsen tilanteen arviointiin lapsi- ja perhepalveluissa sekä lastensuojelussa. Tutkimuksen aineistona ovat 17 arvioinnin järjestämisestä vastaavan esihenkilön haastattelua, jotka toteutettiin vuosina 2021 ja 2022. Aineiston analyysissa käytimme teema-analyysia. Tutkimuksemme tuloksina tunnistimme ja nimesimme kolme erilaista teemaa, jotka kuvaavat muutoksia arviointikäytännöissä eri näkökulmista. Näitä teemoja ovat: etäyhteyksien käytön lisääntyminen, sosiaali- ja terveyspalveluihin pääsyn ja arvioinnin määräaikojen venyminen sekä riskien arvioinnin monimutkaistuminen.

KEYWORDS:

• Child welfare services
• family services
• assessment of child’s well-being
• COVID-19
• Finland

AVAINSANAT:

• lastensuojelu
• lapsi- ja perhepalvelut
• lapsen tilanteen arviointi
• COVID-10
• Suomi

Introduction

COVID-19 pandemic has impacted populations on the local as well as on the global levels. The pandemic simultaneously threatened multiple human resources, such as sense of safety, physical and psychological health, social relations, and economic assets of households (van der Velden et al., 2020). According to previous studies, the pandemic has also negatively affected families in several ways, such as increasing unemployment and financial difficulties (HGSE, 2020), exacerbating gender inequality (Clark et al., 2021; Collins et al., 2021), parents’ (Wang et al., 2020) as well as young peoples’ (Racine et al., 2021) mental health, and increasing incidences of domestic violence (Haapakangas, 2020; Husso et al., 2021).

In Finland, various phases of lockdown and local restrictions between 2020 and 2022 required COVID-19 prevention measures, such as the closure of schools and daycare centres and restricting social contact including leisure time activities. According to Statistics Finland, 60% of the entire working population moved to remote work in 2020 (Sutela, 2020). This meant that families spent most of their time together inside their homes and were forced to change their everyday life routines in multiple ways. Specifically, parents had to combine their work and increased housework responsibilities with childcare while assisting their children with their school assignments, which proved to be difficult especially for single-parent families and families with children who has special needs (Heino & Kara, 2021).

In spring 2020, families used family services and healthcare services less frequently than before the pandemic (Lammi-Taskula, 2020). The pandemic itself has particularly impacted families and children in vulnerable situations, and the lack of support from services has made the situation for many families more difficult. In autumn 2020, a nationwide survey among supervisors working in child welfare services was implemented across Finland. More than half of respondents reported that problems within clients’ families increased in many ways, including financial difficulties, problems related to interactions between family members, mental health issues among children and parents, parental burnout, and children’s difficulties with school. Half of respondents also reported that child welfare notifications have increased following the start of the pandemic particularly in relation to notifications made by police and school personnel (Tiili et al., 2020.) These findings are rather worrying, especially in the case of police reports, since the police typically mainly detect serious welfare concerns. These findings mean that social distancing measures have disrupted mechanisms via which welfare concerns are identified at an earlier stage. While the COVID-19 virus itself rarely results in serious infections in children, the pandemic has negative impacts related to its social consequences, such as hampering families’ resources necessary for caring for children, restricting social contact, and limiting access to social and healthcare services (Bakrania et al., 2020; Hemming, 2021).

The pandemic has also greatly impacted child welfare services. As stated above, situations of families with children became more challenging as well as context and conditions for providing child welfare and other family services (Hastrup et al., 2020). In this difficult situation, goal of the job of social workers remained the same. According to the Finnish Child Welfare Act (417/2007), the objective of child protection is ‘to protect children’s rights to a safe growth environment and to balanced and well-rounded development’. These objectives include supporting parents and custodians in childrearing, providing support at a sufficiently early stage, and placing a child in alternative care if a child’s well-being is at risk. This means that child protection carries a special task based on synthesising support and control.

The assessment of a child’s well-being following a child welfare notification or other contact where concern about child’s welfare is expressed represents a critical moment in the child protection process since it determines the decisions of social workers as well as the support and services provided to that child and their family. Thus, the assessment directly affects a child’s well-being (Jaakola, 2020). Home visits and face-to-face meetings with a child and their parents as well as with other professionals remain important components in this process. After the COVID-19 pandemic began in spring 2020, periodic nationwide and local lockdowns and restrictions have placed limits on the possibilities for such meetings.

In this article, we examine the changes the COVID-19 pandemic brought about in relation to the assessment of child well-being implemented in family and child welfare services. Our data consist of 17 phone interviews with supervisors who work in family and child welfare services and who are responsible for organising the assessment of a child’s well-being. We approach the COVID-19 pandemic as an unplanned change impacting assessment practices.

While we are not specifically analysing child protection supervision during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on supervisors’ perspectives is interesting since supervisors have profound knowledge about the nature of child protection and because their work extends across multiple layers. First, supervision in child protection consists of strategic and financial management including developing structures of organisation, working conditions, and services provided by the organisation (Heinonen & Sinko, 2014). Second, human resource management includes practical organisation and coordination tasks between social workers, as well as the provision of emotional support to social workers (Beddoe et al., 2022; Munro, 2011). Third, supervisors implement process management in client work, such as providing consultations to social workers and coordinating cooperation with other service providers who work with clients (Paasivirta & Pitkänen, 2020; Petrelius & Eriksson, 2018), meaning that they have direct contact with practical social work and client situations.

We begin our article by describing the nature and practices related to the assessment of child well-being in Finland and the approach we use to examine changes brought about by COVID-19. Then, we describe our data and the methods we employed in this study. Finally, we discuss our results. Since at the time of writing in 2023, we still cannot claim that the COVID-19 pandemic has ended, our research may provide important information for use during this and future pandemics. We conclude by providing the implications of our findings.

Assessments in family and child welfare services

In Finland, the assessment of a child’s circumstances begins within seven business days after a social worker receives the first notification or referral regarding a concern for a child’s well-being. The social worker is obligated to finish the assessment within three months (Child Welfare Act 417/2007; Social Welfare Act, 1301/2014). The same social worker carries out the assessment of a child’s and family’s needs for support and for services provided through family services, specifically in relation to voluntary in-home services (Social Welfare Act, 1301/2014). This same social worker also conducts the assessment of an urgent need for protection (Child Welfare Act 417/2007). These two types of assessments can be completed simultaneously if the social worker identifies signs of a child’s maltreatment or indications of being in immediate danger.

The overarching aim in the assessment relies on the principle of a child’s best interests (Child Welfare Act 417/2007). During the assessment process, professionals evaluate the risks and protective factors in the current situation using the available information about a family’s context, living conditions, close relationships as well as the custodians’ capacity to take care of a child. The social worker must critically analyse all available information in order to form a valid picture of the situation (Helm, 2011; Horwath, 2007; Östberg, 2014). Social workers’ qualities, including their practical skills and knowledge, values, and the methods they employ influence the assessment process and outcomes. In addition, the organisational structures and guidelines (weather assessment is implemented in teams, weather social workers have possibility to consult more experienced colleagues, etc.) as well as the societal norms (what is considered to be risk for child well-being) impact assessments (Fluke et al., 2020; Shlonsky & Benbenishty, 2014).

The assessment process involves selecting the pathways regarding where to target support and control in a particular situation (Helm, 2016). In practice this process can result in different outcomes: it can serve as the starting point for a child becoming a client of child protection, it can lead to other supportive services being offered to a child and the family without the child becoming a client of child protection, or it can lead to a decision that no supportive measures are needed by a family. The importance of an assessment emerges specifically when a social worker plans future measures and services provided to a child and family, thus forming the foundation for further work (Horwath, 2001; Jaakola, 2020).

COVID-19 pandemic as a source of change

The idea of change is constantly present in child welfare services, since a social worker typically supports parents and children to change situations that threaten a child’s well-being. In Finland, the social work concept of change work (muutostyö) guides work, meaning that the client constructs the change and the social worker provides support for that change (Jokinen, 2014). In addition to clients’ diverse situations, the societal context of child protection, legislation, and child protection as an institution are constantly going through both small and large changes (Heinonen & Sinko, 2014).

According to Lewis (2014), a change that concerns organisations is usually an interactional process in which work is reorganised, modified, and renewed and in which people working in an organisation adjust to this process. Within an organisation, a change is an interactional process containing various interpretations, whereby the way a change is discussed can profoundly impact the change itself. Changes can be approached from various perspectives, such as an episodic change, characterised by brief moments of change or as a steady long-term process (Lewis, 2014).

As previously stated, the COVID-19 pandemic impacted local and global levels in multiple ways. What distinguishes the pandemic from long-term societal changes or planned organisational changes is that it occurred unexpectedly and changed work practices in many ways exceptionally quickly because of restrictions to social contacts (Amis & Janz, 2020). Thus, changes in work practices during the pandemic were not planned, controlled, or clearly scheduled. In fact, we are continuing to experience this process, since COVID-19 and its variants continue circulating within populations across different countries. In the context of the pandemic, change can be approached as an inevitable, yet conscious adjustment to a new environment.

According to previous studies, the COVID-19 pandemic has similarly impacted social work and child welfare services in different countries regardless of the significant variation in social work practices across contexts. For example, Banks et al. (2020) implemented a study examining challenges social workers faced during the pandemic among respondents from 54 countries. According to their results, social workers faced universal challenges primarily related to establishing remote relationships with clients. Thus, most respondents reported difficulties in evaluating living conditions, a family’s situation, and their service needs. In addition, respondents expressed difficulties in maintaining trust with their clients, ensuring their privacy and confidentiality, and supporting client autonomy without face-to-face meetings. Moving towards remote communication was also described as difficult in other studies, particularly from the point of view of assessing a child’s situation and hearing a child’s voice (Driscoll et al., 2021; Pink et al., 2020; Torosa & Falch-Eriksen, 2020). Remote communication leaves many things out that are present during face-to-face meetings, such as nonverbal cues, embodied experiences, and in the case of home visits engagement with the intimacy of social and material relations in a home and the people living within it. These are often essential to understanding and assessing complex situations. Therefore, disrupting home visits particularly at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic was perceived as negative change to social work practice (Cook & Zschomler, 2020; Pink et al., 2020).

Second, several studies illustrated that all face-to-face meetings were perceived as carrying the risk of spreading or contracting the virus, causing additional strains on social workers, especially if organisational guidelines about meetings and protection during those meetings were unclear (Driscoll et al., 2021; Harrikari et al., 2021; Pink et al., 2022). For instance, Caldwell et al. (2021) described the situation as negotiating whether to prioritise acute physical health risks or prioritising the long-term implications for a child’s well-being. Third, social workers reported increased stress levels after the COVID-19 pandemic started and heightened emotions such as fear, anxiety, and shame (Ashcroft et al., 2022; Banks et al., 2020; Miller et al., 2020).

More specifically, a study implemented among social workers in Finland (Harrikari et al., 2021) also revealed that the pandemic challenged social work in multiple ways. The most pressing problems mentioned in that study were the inadequacy of crisis management and communication in social welfare organisations, including confusing instructions handed down to employees. Additionally, limitations to the infrastructure enabling employees to work remotely were mentioned. Participants of the study reported that the pandemic exacerbated conflicts within workplace teams and highlighted issues concerning heavy workloads and unfair divisions of labour.

As mentioned previously, most studies concentrated on the negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Notably a few studies (Driscoll et al., 2021; Pink et al., 2020) suggested that some practices applied during the first wave of the pandemic could be useful in the future. For example, online communication has been and in the future can also be useful for some children and young people who are more accustomed or comfortable with expressing themselves in a digital world, particularly since it can minimise the challenge of accessing traditional services. Specifically, a study by Harrikari et al. (2021) recognised the strengths of social work that became visible during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as professional reflexivity and flexibility, a rapid adaptation to change, and tenacious professional ethics. Thus, the lessons learned during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic can help the social work profession to better prepare for the future using knowledge we already possess about useful work practices.

Data and methods

This study is a part of a larger research project, ‘Child welfare as a child’s best interest?’, funded by Finland’s Ministry of Social Affairs and Health Welfare and implemented by the University of Tampere and the Socca Center of Expertise on Social Welfare in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. The ex ante ethical evaluation was approved by the Ethical Committee of the University of Tampere. The research team also adhered to Finnish National Board on Research Integrity’s guidelines throughout the entire study (TENK, 2019).

The research material used in this article consists of 17 interviews conducted by first and second authors via Microsoft Teams and telephone between September 2021 and January 2022 with supervisors working in family services and child welfare services. Interviewees were supervisors from 12 different municipalities and 5 joint municipal authorities who lead assessments of children’s well-being. Our goal was to include interviewees across Finland to get broad picture of a universal features as well as local differences of assessment process. All municipalities and joint municipalities granted official permission for our research.

Participation in the study was completely voluntary, and efforts have been made to secure consent and carefully ensure subjects’ anonymity at all stages of the study. The total duration of the interviews was 20 h 55 min, consisting of 179 pages of transcribed data. During all interviews, we asked the same questions regarding the assessment of a child’s situation. Therefore, we discussed the same themes with all interviewees. In this article, we concentrate on the assessment of child well-being after the COVID-19 pandemic began and during pandemic. Our primary research question is as follows:

• What changes has the COVID-19 pandemic brought about on the initial assessment of a child’s situation?

We used thematic analysis (Clarke & Braun, 2017), and analysed our data as follows. The first author created an initial coding chart. In that chart, she separated the data quotes in which interviewees discussed assessments and changes in their work resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Next, the first and second authors examined these quotes, classifying them along thematic categories that capture the content and form changes as well as measures required from social workers themselves to adapt to those changes. During the third stage of the analysis, all authors analytically discussed the preliminary results and classified and combined the results based on the most prominent themes that emerged in relation to the entire dataset. As a result of our study, we identified and named three themes that describe different types of changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic in relation to assessments. These themes are moving towards remote communication, delays in the availability of services and assessment deadlines and the addition complexities of risk assessment. These themes represent changes in the working environment as well as in work practices. Themes of supervising are not included in our analysis.

Notably, all interviewees were closely involved with direct client work in some way. Some interviewees had their own clients alongside their administrative tasks, and all of them supervised social workers in their team who work on specific client cases. Thus, all of them were quite aware of what happens in the field of social work. In addition, all of the interviewees used expressions such as ‘we’, ‘our unit’, ‘our work’, and ‘our clients’, implying that they responded not only as a supervisor or as a representative of social workers, but also as a social worker. This can be interpreted as a sign of the responsibility a supervisor carries for client work. It may also indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic increased the experience of togetherness within teams, since they all found themselves in a new and challenging situation within which they were obligated to work.

Results

Moving towards remote communication

Interviewees described the physical distancing requirements and the unexpected move from face-to-face interactions to remote communication as a substantial change in their assessment-related work. Specifically, face-to-face communication had previously been considered the only possible way to carry out assessments. As one interviewee stated, ‘Before the pandemic we never discussed or considered it an option’. Supervisors described this change as problematic, but simultaneously as increasing the flexibility related to performing assessments. All supervisors agreed that moving to remote communication particularly at the beginning of the pandemic in spring 2020 was challenging:

Home visits were reduced when restrictions caused by the coronavirus were put into place. We gained experience during the first corona spring indicating that children’s circumstances were a lot worse when we could perform a home visit than we when we were informed via remote communication. Of course, via remote communication, interactions between family members were not visible in the same way as when we performed home visits and could see for ourselves how they act there. (Interview 7)

Interviewees explained that social workers used video calls via Teams and regular phone calls when they contacted clients. They described how hard it was to implement assessments properly remotely, because living conditions and family relations were impossible to evaluate from a distance. Interviewees also highlighted that observing small children in particular who were under school age and discussing their situation with them did not work through video calls. Many interviewees explained that they had an entirely remote connection with clients only during the first couple of weeks at the beginning of the pandemic in spring 2020, but subsequently client work continued at least partially face-to-face because of the problems related to remote communication:

We have of course also worked remotely, but our client contacts have been mostly face-to-face. We have met clients at the office. We have completed home visits, although maybe fewer. We have not completed family work from a distance. We have done it with families. Maybe we have used more protection equipment and had more meetings outside. They [social workers] have planned some activities outside, which has helped to observe family dynamics and other things. (Interview 4)

Despite the pandemic, the core of the assessment – that is, the need to view material living conditions and observe nonverbal cues from conversations with family members – did not change. Furthermore, assessments performed completely remotely were described by supervisors as ‘not having a good quality’ and ‘leaving social workers unsure whether they saw the whole picture’. When resuming face-to-face contacts, interviewees highlighted that they instructed social workers to follow safety measures, such as meeting clients outside when possible and from a safe distance as well as using surgical masks and hand sanitiser.

Regardless of the problems mentioned previously, interviewees also explained that remote communication increased the flexibility in child protection and family services in general as well as in assessments. Supervisors used expressions such as ‘COVID-19 restrictions helped people to come from the ‘80s to contemporary times’ and the pandemic provided the ‘tools and understanding that things can be done in a different way’. Remote communication was perceived as a workable solution particularly when the family and the child were already familiar to a social worker and if there were no urgent matters or no an acute crisis within the family:

We pretty much came to the conclusion that meeting new people in particular through Teams alone prevented the assessment or at least surely weakened the quality of an assessment. We noted this. But then there is much more sense to maintaining contact through Teams with people we already know and when organizing network meetings. (Interview 3)

Remote communication from time to time with familiar clients was described as a long-term change the pandemic brought about, since it made it possible to keep in touch with families even though one family member had, for example, a mild case of the flu, a frequent occurrence in families with several small children. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, those kinds of meetings would be rescheduled for another time, thereby prolonging the assessment period and increasing the risks to a child’s well-being. Several interviewees also highlighted that remote communication and hybrid meetings work well if part of the assessment is completed during network meetings, requiring attendance from many professionals besides social workers, such as psychiatrists, medical doctors, or school representatives. Remote or hybrid meetings saved time and the resources of professionals, and could also be a good option for a client:

For some clients it is probably more comfortable when the entire network is not physically present. I believe that there are benefits to it [remote communication]. Clients have been giving feedback that in such situations it is somehow easier to discuss their situation. (Interview 14)

According to supervisors, hybrid network meetings reduce the power asymmetry between professionals and the parents of a child in a situation in which the parents are attending a meeting with several professionals and must respond to questions even if not all professionals are physically present and sitting across the desk from them. Another positive result interviewees mentioned was working with young clients who are more accustomed to remote communication. These practices were primarily developed during the pandemic, and interviewees had good experiences with them and planned to continue employing such practices in the future.

Delays in the availability of services and assessment deadlines

Respondents described one negative consequence of the pandemic as a decreasing availability of other services, which negatively impacted the well-being of many children and caused assessment delays in cases needing cooperation involving multiple professionals. Supervisors described the situation as ‘chaotic’, especially at the beginning of the pandemic because it was unclear if it was possible to meet anyone if the child’s situation was categorised as not urgent. Most interviewees explained that the most visible change was that other service providers, such as those in health care, schools, disability services, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that worked with families, moved to online services or reduced their operations, causing a lot of pressure on child welfare services:

It was a very hard time in social work units when everyone pulled away. All the NGOs and social work projects pulled away first, then everyone disappeared behind the phone or into some virtual systems and only this hard core was functioning. (Interview 5)

The phrase ‘staying alone’ was used during several interviews. Long queues in health care, especially in mental healthcare services, became even longer and many meetings were delayed because a client or a professional was sick or exposed to COVID-19. In addition, other healthcare services and acute cases were prioritised in the healthcare unit, which delayed assessment process and providing support for families at the early stage. In the following example, the interviewee described various reasons for why completing assessments became difficult:

COVID-19 made home visits and meetings here in the office more difficult. It has made networking and, of course, completing assessments more difficult. And, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the overall danger of marginalization [of children and their parents] in many ways (___), although I cannot say by precisely how much. It caused different phenomena that we could not start our work initially. And it made even starting an assessment difficult, because the problems became visible only later. (Interview 13)

This example illustrates the many consequences that COVID-19 had on assessments. First, the pandemic made social work with clients as well as with other partners difficult, meaning that assessments could not be implemented within a standard timeframe and services provided to families were delayed. Second, other services were also less available. One important issue the interviewee described was that the pandemic itself alongside social restrictions caused those families and children in vulnerable situations before the pandemic multiple problems. Some problems were related to parents losing their jobs, which was described as especially straining economically on single-parent households. Children who had difficulties in their studies, behavioural, or mental health problems ‘fell out’ of distance teaching or other remote services because such services were unsuitable for those children. According to the interviewees, many challenges facing families and children have been exacerbated and prolonged.

We see the consequences (of COVID-19) in our work, because the situations for the children and families who come to us as clients are much more complicated than before and there are many accumulated service needs. (Interview 10)

According to the interviewees, the current situation now that children are back in schools and receiving other social and healthcare services allows all professionals to see that many children’s situations worsened during the pandemic. Simultaneously, all services are overbooked, because of service needs that accumulated during the first wave of the pandemic. In practice, this means that other professionals are sending child welfare notifications, asking family and child protection services to make assessments and to intervene in a child’s situation. This, of course, causes a burden on family and child welfare services. As stated above, delays in the availability of services and assessment deadlines have been described as the primary negative change, hugely impacting the current situation. Many interviewees hoped that lessons could be learned here and that child protection and family services will be not forgotten during the next societal crisis.

Challenges of conducting assessments

Assessment work includes assessing and managing risks when a social worker evaluates the best interests and well-being of a child. Interviewees explained how the COVID-19 pandemic increased their risk assessment duties given that they now had to evaluate the risk of spreading or contracting the virus in their client work alongside various other risks. According to the interviewees, time and case management became more challenging because many meetings with clients were cancelled due to sickness, flu symptoms, or exposure to the coronavirus, which increased concerns that the situation among children needing assessments would worsen. The pandemic created an ethical dilemma among supervisors especially during the first wave of the pandemic since acute physical health risks were prioritised over the long-term implications for a child’s well-being. One problem interviewees mentioned was the difficulty of evaluating the factual risk of COVID-19 and separating it from clients’ unwillingness to meet with social workers:

You always have to keep in mind and ask yourself if someone is cancelling a meeting with us using coronavirus as an excuse because they do not want to meet us. And sometimes we are worried about that. And sometimes we have to say that this meeting must happen! Even if it is outside, we have done that, so that things will move along further in the process. We have been taking care of that. Because we cannot all retreat to bunkers. It is a fact that we still have to perform this job. (Interview 1)

Supervisors explained that during the pandemic social workers must continuously weigh the risks associated with face-to-face meetings from several points of view. On the one hand, social workers deal with the fact that they are now the one who can pose a threat to clients, because social workers have multiple contacts with multiple individuals, resulting in a higher likelihood of exposure to COVID-19 and the potential to infect their clients. On the other hand, social workers were under a constant threat themselves putting their own family at risk by completing their client work.

Another dilemma mentioned was the question regarding how to respect clients’ fears of COVID-19 infection and deciding when it is time to intervene regardless of the risk, which caused a continuous calculation of risks, doubts, and stress. If a face-to-face meeting was cancelled due to the risk of infection, social workers had to determine how to support clients from a distance:

Of course our basic task was the same all along, but the pandemic weakened our ability to implement it, because now we have to be aware and constantly check when we can organize meetings. Our basic task did not change, we took care of it all the time, and we had to follow up with people even if via phone calls, so that they did not fall out of care permanently. But it made our face-to-face meetings related to assessment less frequent, because we had to thoroughly and really carefully determine that all parties were healthy. (Interview 12)

From the supervisors’ perspectives, evaluating risks in uncertain situations was also difficult, because social workers themselves also had their own fears related to the risk of COVID-19 infection. This resulted in negotiations regarding how assessments could be performed, while balancing professional duties and personal fears of contracting the virus.

I noticed that even in this team that some want to maintain more distance and would like to work remotely. And others argue that we cannot do this job from a distance, and that everyone should return to the office. (Interview 1)

In general, the COVID-19 pandemic required a balance between immediate health risks (such as contracting and spreading a potentially deadly virus) and long-term risks (such as negative outcomes due to children’s isolation). The pandemic also resulted in questions related to respecting clients’ and social workers’ autonomy and concerns related to face-to-face meetings. Supervisors attempted to reduce those fears and protect the physical health of all parties with clear safety instructions and alleviate the anxiety of social workers by openly discussing the concerns they had.

Discussion

In this study, we examined the changes the COVID-19 pandemic brought about related to the assessment of a child’s well-being, approaching change as an adjustment to a new environment. Interviewees described the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2020 retrospectively as well as its consequences for the current context. Supervisors discussed their own as well as social workers’ positions as shifting during the same interviews, since all were involved in client work. As a result of our study, we identified and described three themes that emerged from the data, which consisted of moving towards remote communication, delays in the availability of services and assessment deadlines and the challenges of conducting assessments.

Moving towards remote communication was described as simultaneously a negative and positive change. On the one hand, all interviewees experienced remote communication as unsuitable for contacting completely new clients, for use during acute crises in a family, or for communication with children not yet in school. These findings mirror results from previous studies (Driscoll et al., 2021; Pink et al., 2020; Torosa & Falch-Eriksen, 2020), whereby remote communication misses multiple cues important during assessments.

On the other hand, remote communication was described as suitable for network meetings and working with young people more familiar with the digital world. Interviewees also claimed that remote communication can reduce some barriers to care to traditional services as well as increase the effectiveness of the assessment process. This stems from the fact that contacting a social worker is easier, and meetings need not be postponed for reasons such as one participant having a mild case of the flu or being exposed to the coronavirus. Thus, a hybrid model, where both face-to-face and remote communication are used, represents a long-term shift resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Remote communication cannot replace all face-to-face meetings, but it can serve as a new method in work practices. We agree with Pink et al.’s (2022) argument that hybrid digital social work will and should be a part of social work, because it increases flexibility in social work practices. The development of digital social work was in some sense already moving in this direction, but the pandemic seemed to intensify the so-called digital leap in this direction.

Delays in the availability of services and assessment deadlines during the COVID-19 pandemic represented a negative change carrying largely long-term negative consequences. Interviewees described the accumulated services needs of children and families, whereby some pre-pandemic challenges children and families faced have increased while additional challenges have emerged. Notably, interviewees highlighted the importance of their own work and used terms such as ‘hard core’ to describe it, which can be interpreted as professional pride. This might stem from the meaning of assessing a child’s welfare which has become more meaningful especially when no other services were available to families. The accumulation of service needs affected the role of assessments in the current context. Additionally, the role of assessments changed to become more of an intervention given that other services were overbooked and could not address all service requests.

Finally, the challenges of conducting assessments highlight various dilemmas related to risk assessments and risk management. First, the pandemic caused an ethical dilemma regarding whether to prioritise acute physical health risks for clients and social workers versus the long-term implications for a child’s well-being. Trust towards clients weakened, and a mission related to control came to the forefront, since social workers had to evaluate whether clients’ unwillingness to meet was caused by actual health risks or their reluctance to meet with a social worker. The safety of social workers themselves and their families also became an issue, since an assessment requires contact with various clients. Supervisors were obligated to consider and support social workers if they had fears about COVID-19 and preferred different methods of working. Clear instructions regarding safety reduced those dilemmas in risk assessments. As Caldwell et al. (2021) state, COVID-19 resulted in new elements to risk assessments and in many cases forced individuals to weigh the short-term risks against long-term outcomes. Now that more information about COVID-19 and good working practices are available, we need to redefine risks in a broader way and apply this perspective during future crises, since we now possess knowledge of the harm that social isolation and reducing many services caused families.

Implications

The results of our study show that social workers have quickly adapted to the changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic and found different ways of carrying out their work given the new circumstances. Our findings agree with other studies (Banks et al., 2020; Harrikari et al., 2021; Torosa & Falch-Eriksen, 2020), in which authors argued that the most crucial thing for future pandemics is to think how the social work profession can better prepare for similar situations in the future. That is, how can we be more proactive instead of simply reactive?

Given our results, we offer two suggestions. First, we have already gained research knowledge about the limitations and possibilities of completing assessments through remote communication. In our view, it is important to share both our collective knowledge and good practices as well as the mistakes made nationally and internationally. Clear guidelines for safe face-to-face meetings as well as high-quality remote communication are needed specifically as they relate to family and child welfare services as well as other social work fields.

Second, it also became clear in this study as well in other studies (Ashcroft et al., 2022; Banks et al., 2020; Miller et al., 2020) that during societal crises social workers experience significant levels of stress, conflicting emotions, and face ethical dilemmas. In such situations, it is important that social workers are not left alone, ensuring that supervision and guidance are available. Additionally, it is important to ensure that social workers have the possibility to recover from their work.

Limitations

We close by mentioning several limitations to this study. First, our study relies on a small qualitative dataset from one country during a particular period of time. Yet, conducting interviews one-and-a-half years after the COVID-19 pandemic began made it possible for interviewees to reflect upon their experiences and discuss the lessons learned, including their views on periodic as well as long-term changes resulting from the pandemic. Notably, we interviewed supervisors who worked in family and child welfare services and were responsible for organising initial assessments of a child’s situation. While interviewees changed positions from being a supervisor and a representative of social workers to being social workers, it is possible that those social workers implementing assessments in the field had different perspectives on their work during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the future, studies from their perspective would be valuable. Also supervision during societal or health crises is important theme that needs elaboration.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Finland’s Ministry of Social Affairs and Health.

Notes on contributors

Eveliina Heino

Dr. Eveliina Heino, PhD, Docent is a University Lecturer at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Helsinki. Her research has focused on diversity, migration, and social and health services. Currently, she is working on research related to consequences of COVID-19 pandemic.

Minna Veistilä

Dr. Minna Veistilä, PhD is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Tampere. Her main research interests are well-being of families with children and supervision in child welfare services.

Tuuli Lamponen

Dr. Tuuli Lamponen, PhD is a University Lecturer at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Helsinki. Her research interests cover assessment and decision-making in child welfare services as a professional and institutional task of social work.