Decision-making tools and the development of expertise in child protection practitioners: are we ‘just breeding workers who are good at ticking boxes’?

Concern about the decision-making abilities of practitioners in child protection has led to the development and implementation of increasingly structured assessment tools, many based on forms of risk assessment. The positive and negative effects of such tools on practice have been widely researched and debated. This paper presents the findings from ethnographic research about the use of a particular set of decision-making tools that provide insights into how tools might affect the professional development of practitioners. The overall finding that the use of decision-making tools may impair professional development draws attention to the importance of the process of implementation, in particular how tools are regarded within an organization in relation to practitioner expertise.