Understanding and improving discretionary judgment and decision-making in child protection practice: Towards a whole-of-system policy evaluation

Discretionary judgment is a necessary and desirable attribute of child protection practice and decision-making. Increasingly, approaches towards accountability in child protection services act to constrain the use of practitioner discretionary judgement through ever increasing layers of standardisation and technical-rational approaches to practice. This situation is at odds with the need for professionals to adaptively respond to practice...