Engaging Mothers in Romanian Child Protection Services: Caseworkers’ Perspectives

This paper presents the results of a study that explored mothers’ engagement in Romanian child welfare services from the perspective of caseworkers. The impetus of this research was given by the need to contribute to the knowledge in child and family social work with information on the seldom addressed topic of how maternal engagement unfolds in Romanian public welfare system. Maternal engagement is discussed in the context of Romanian society and results suggest that—although caseworkers have factual information on most mothers—they seldom engage them in case assessment, service planning or service delivery and focus more on the mothers’ weaknesses than their strengths

Keywords: Romanian child welfare system, child protection services, engaging the mother