Group Decision-making in Child Welfare and the Pursuit of Participation

Abstract

In institutional social work, decision-making is a core task that increasingly involves more than one professional as well as, frequently, the clients. Group decision-making is fundamentally different from individual decision-making in that it is an inherently social activity calling for the communicative competencies of those involved. In this article, we describe group decision-making procedures for a specific setting of German child welfare. Condensing our findings into an idealised model of decision-making, we attempt to show how communicative and interactive exigencies conflict with decision-making rationalities. We go on to discuss the consequences this conflict has on the participation of clients in the decision-making process, arguing that social workers are likely to address both rationales separately. We show that accordingly, participation in the interaction does not necessarily safeguard a partaking in the decision.