Changes to assessments of child well-being brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic–Finnish family services and child welfare services supervisors’ perspective

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted social work practices, given limitations to practitioners’ possibilities to meet with clients face-to-face since spring 2020. In this article, we examine the kinds of changes the COVID-19 pandemic brought about in relation to assessment practices in Finnish family and child welfare services. Collected in 2021 and 2022, data consist of 17 interviews with supervisors who work in family and child welfare services and who are responsible for organising the assessment of children’s well-being. To analyse the data, we employed a thematic analysis. As a result of our study, we identified and named three different themes to describe changes to practices from different perspectives. These themes are moving to remote communication, delays in the availability of social and health services and assessment deadlines as well as the challenges of conducting assessments.