The Work Experience of Counselors at Local Child Protection Agencies After Publicizinizing...

Full title : The Work Experience of Counselors at Local Child Protection Agencies After Publicizing Child Abuse Investigation Policy

Song Yi Park | Institute of Social Welfare, Seoul National University

Joan. P. Yoo | Department of Social Welfare, Seoul National University

Bong Joo Lee| Department of Social Welfare, Seoul National University

Jae Yoon Lee | Institute of Social Welfare, Seoul National University

Yesang Cho | Institute of Social Welfare, Seoul National University

Sang Gyun Lee | Department of Social Welfare, the Catholic University of Korea

Se Won Kim | Department of Social Welfare, Catholic Kwandong University

Hyun-Soo Kim | Department of Child Psychotherapy, Hanyang university

ABSTRACT

In October 2019, a policy to publicize child abuse investigations was introduced as a detailed task for the Inclusive Country Child Policy, as a part of strengthening the responsibility of local governments for the best interests of children. The policy for publicizing child abuse investigations established a shared system in which the public sector performs the entire process from child abuse investigations to follow-up and the private sector carries out case management. At this point when the national responsibility on child abuse is strengthened, this study aims to explore changes in the field after the policy and to suggest improvements. Therefore, this study conducted a qualitative study with 18 local child protection agency counselors to find out what their work experiences were after publicizing child abuse investigation policy. As a result, the experiences of counselors at local child protection agencies after the policy were analyzed in two themes. First, they were experiencing ‘transition to case management-focused institutions’ as ‘expectancy effects of publicizing child abuse investigations’. Second, ‘the emergence of new problems and the failure to resolve old tasks due to publicizing child abuse investigations’ revealed ‘limits due to collaboration in heterogeneous organizational systems’ and ‘factors hindering the transition to specialized case management institution’. The implications of the findings are discussed.

KEYWORDS

Child abuse, Publicizing child abuse investigations, Local child protection agencies, public-private cooperation, case management expertise, qualitative research

Research of case management, 13:1, 35-72,