From investigation to collaboration: Practitioner perspectives on the transition phase of parental agreements

• Families and practitioners find it challenging to transition from an investigation focus to a collaborative working partnership
• Practitioners require high level communication and engagement skills to negotiate the transition from investigation to collaboration
• The least intrusive means of intervention should be used whenever possible
• Transparency and timeliness in the use of parental agreements is required to facilitate parental engagement
• A willingness to understand the client context in regards to stressors, abilities and needs is required to facilitate positive outcomes and collaborative partnerships with families

Internationally there is a growing trend to implement alternative pathways within statutory child protection. This trend has emerged in response to burgeoning pressures on statutory child protection authorities and research highlighting the potentially negative impact of intrusive interventions on families. There is great diversity in the types of alternative pathways that have been implemented across jurisdictions. Differential response and parental agreements are two examples of alternative pathways that can be enacted for cases that warrant ongoing intervention. Whilst sharing commonalities such as providing supportive responses and working collaboratively with parents to avoid children going into out-of-home care, these two approaches have a significant difference in their implementation. Differential response allows families to be linked with supportive interventions without the prerequisite of a full child protection investigation. In contrast, in many jurisdictions, including Queensland (Australia) where this study takes place, the implementation of parental agreements occurs after the investigation has occurred. As such parents are expected to transition from being investigated to being a collaborative partner in addressing child protection concerns. In this paper, we report on a study into the use of parental agreements, known in Queensland as “Intervention with Parental Agreement” (IPA) and focus on this transition phase. Drawing on interviews with 25 practitioners we highlight the factors that impact this critical stage of IPA practice and identify factors that facilitate and inhibit a successful transition from investigation to collaboration.