Measuring the scope of social workers’ assessments in Finnish child welfare using principal component analysis

During an assessment, social workers are required to consider several factors in a child’s situation. In particular, they need to identify different aspects of the child’s welfare, special needs and risks, as well as the child’s best interests. However, this broad focus can create challenges for social workers as to how to prioritise and balance the content of their assessments. In Finland, there is no common framework for assessments, and little information is available about the scope of assessments. In this article, we therefore examine the scope of assessments and the factors that Finnish social workers consider in their assessments. Empirically, we use survey data from social workers ( N = 373) and quantitative methods, such as direct distributions, mean values and principal component analysis. According to our findings, the scope of assessments is broad, and social workers assess each child’s situation by weighing several factors. We divided the results into five child-related dimensions, four parent-related dimensions and three family environment dimensions, and there were variations in the weighting of these dimensions. This article provides knowledge on how to measure the scope of assessments as well as how this scope relates to the Nordic child welfare system.