Ravit Alfandari

• PhD
• Lecturer at University of Haifa

This qualitative research was designed to evaluate the extent to which a national reform in Israeli child protection decision making committees was achieving its aim to strengthen professional judgment through introducing a new standard tools package into practice. Twenty-one case studies of families referred to the committee were investigated and...

Summary Child maltreatment is a complex public health issue that has consequences across the life-course. Studies to quantify child maltreatment and identify interventions and services are constrained by a lack of uniform definitions. We conducted a European Delphi study to reach consensus on types and characteristics of child maltreatment for use...

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a widespread social, public health, and human rights problem. Empirical investigation of IPV risk factors can promote evidence-based assessment tools and effective prevention and intervention. This overview is a pioneering synthesis of systematic reviews (SRs) of IPV risk factors. Systematic searches for SRs in En...

Decision making is an intrinsic and complex aspect of social work practice, requiring consideration of diverse but connected aspects. Decisions are often required as to whether a situation requires protective state intervention or whether it reaches the criteria for public or charitable services. Such instances of deciding whether or not a situatio...

The Decisions, Assessment and Risk Special Interest Group of the European Social Work Research Association (DARSIG) dedicated a pre-conference event at the 2023 European Conference for Social Work Research in Milan, Italy, to the application of innovations using big data and machine-learning algorithms in social work risk assessment and decision-ma...

Introduction Child maltreatment (CM) is a complex global public health issue with potentially devastating effects on individuals’ physical and mental health and well-being throughout the life course. A lack of uniform definitions hinders attempts to identify, measure, respond to, and prevent CM. The aim of this electronic Delphi (e-Delphi) study is...

The book is written by scholars and experts who are members of a designated working group of the pan-European Network on Multisectoral Responses to Child Abuse and Neglect in Europe (Euro-CAN), supported by the European Cooperation on Science Technology (COST Action 19106). Its chapters are presenting the theoretical grounding of children’s partici...

The goal of the current project is to create a digital decision support system (CDS) to enable timely identification of children who are suffering or likely to suffer from physical abuse, thus facilitating reporting and early or preventive help.

‘Risk’ has become a central concept for social work practice in countries with more developed social welfare systems. As argued by Hazel Kemshall and colleagues, ‘risk’ has often replaced ‘need’ as the main driver for social work interventions as societies seek to avoid harm to citizens. This shift of focus raises a tension between care (support fo...

This study investigated how physicians, nurses, and social workers in community health care services make judgements about possible child maltreatment in ambiguous situations. We examined the influences of social biases (i.e., perceptions linking ethnicity, gender, and family socioeconomic status to child maltreatment) and belonging to distinctive...

This study explored health outcomes following workplace aggression among social workers in Israel. Grounded in the social exchange theory, a relationship‐based perspective was used to explain the mechanism through which exposure to workplace aggression results in employee outcomes. Reports of employees and managers were analysed with respect to the...

There is increasing interest in decision making in social work. Much of the attention has been on individual professional judgement rather than on group decisions processes. This paper outlines key theoretical approaches from diverse fields of knowledge for conceptualising professional group decision processes in child and family social work, as a...

Background Multi-professional approach to child protection decision making is widely promoted by service organisations, although the conditions for this to be effective are little known. Objective This systematic narrative literature review explored empirical evidence on the implementation of multi-professional child protection decision making in...

The aim of this systematic narrative literature review is to explore empirical evidence as to how a multiprofessional approach to child protection decision making is implemented in hospitals settings. Child protection cases where there is a suspicious serious injury suspected sexual abuse or serious neglect are often investigated in hospital, invol...

Social workers must make ‘justifiable’ decisions, but ‘intuition’ is also important in assessment, decision making and working with risk. We discuss intuition within professional judgement as being part of our cognitive faculties; emotionally-informed reasoning processes connecting workers with clients and families; and intuition making use of inte...

Skills of the 'information age' need to be applied to social work. Conceptual and practical aspects of using online bibliographic databases to identify research were explored using multi-professional decision-making in child protection as a case study. Five databases (Social Science Citation Index, Scopus, Medline, Social Work Abstracts and Cochran...

This study moved away from the usual empirical and moral discussion about all‐encompassing child maltreatment mandatory reporting outcomes toward a much more detailed and nuanced investigation of its implementation in a minority group. We focused on female Arab art‐therapists in Israel working in their community. Twelve female Arab art‐therapists p...

Remarkably little priority is given in the literature to minority groups' perspectives vis-à-vis mandatory reporting legislation of child maltreatment. This study examined how mandatory reporting legislation is perceived and implemented in the ultra-orthodox Jewish population in Israel. This minority group is suspected of failing to report child ma...

This article examines the provision of legal advocacy for parents as a means to promote partnership working in child protection. It is situated in the context of formal decision-making committees in Israel and provides first indications of what happens when lawyers intervene on parents’ behalf. Data were collected using an online survey sent to the...

This study investigated child protection decision-making practices of healthcare-professionals in community-health-services. We examined the effect of heuristics in professional judgments regarding suspected maltreatment, as affected by the child’s ethnicity, gender, and family socioeconomic-status, as well as the healthcare-worker’s workload-stres...

This study investigated child protection decision-making practices of healthcare professionals in community-health-services. We examined the effect of heuristics in professional judgments as affected by the child’s ethnicity, gender, and family socioeconomic-status, as well as the healthcare worker’s workload-stress, and personal and professional b...

Healthcare professionals working in community settings are well-placed to detect suspected child maltreatment cases. Yet, child maltreatment presents particular diagnostic challenges given that the assessment has to be made fast due to the potential harm to the child and under conditions of great uncertainty. The purpose of this article is to exami...

Background: Healthcare professionals working at community-based services have a crucial position in raising concerns about possible child maltreatment. Yet, barriers exist to healthcare professionals adhering to mandatory reporting rules and regulations. Objective: The current study investigated the various forms by which healthcare professional...

Introduction This chapter is positioned at the implementation stage of the policy cycle and focuses on the role and organisation of social workers in the process. The subject of policy implementation – or unsuccessful implementation in this case – is investigated in the context of the recent reform introduced into the child protection work of the s...

This chapter presents a qualitative study that was conducted to investigate the implementation and outcomes of recent child protection reform in Israel. Using the ‘systems approach’ as conceptual framework allowed to understand the impact of the working conditions on every-day child protection practices. The key finding of the research – that the r...

This chapter presents a qualitative study that was conducted to investigate the implementation and outcomes of recent child protection reform in Israel. Using the ‘systems approach’ as conceptual framework allowed to understand the impact of the working conditions on every-day child protection practices. The key finding of the research – that the r...

Bringing together international case studies, this book offers theoretical and empirical insights into the interaction between social work and social policy. Moving beyond existing studies on policy practice, the book employs the policy cycle as a core analytical frame and focuses on the influence of social work(ers) in the problem definition, agen...

Based on the premise that functional, multi-professional work in the child protection process is crucial to the delivery of effective service, this article reports on a qualitative study carried out to evaluate inter-agency and multi-disciplinary practice in Israeli decision-making committees. The investigation was directed by the systems approach...

מחקר איכותני זה נועד להעריך את המידה שבה רפורמה ארצית בוועדות לקבלת החלטות בתחום הגנת הילד בישראל השיגה את מטרתה לחזק את שיקול הדעת המקצועי באמצעות שילוב ערכת כלים סטנדרטית חדשה בפרקטיקה. 21 חקרי מקרה של משפחות שהופנו אל הוועדות נבחנו ומצבן נבדק לאחר שישה חודשים. הנתונים נאספו מראיונות עם עובדים סוציאליים, מתצפיות בדיונים בוועדות ומסקירת מסמכים. שי...

There is a consensus among policymakers, professionals and researchers around the world as to the importance and advantages of partnership in working with parents in child protection. Meaningful partnership enhances the quality of decisions regarding the help provided to children who are suffering or likely to suffer from significant harm from abus...

Partnership with parents in child protection

This research was set out to examine the extent to which a national reform in the Israeli child protection decision-making framework of formal committees is achieving its aim for strengthening partnership with parents. The research employed a qualitative method of inquiry and a case-study design. The cases of twenty-one families brought before the...

רפורמה ארצית בתחום הגנת הילד בישראל תוכננה, בין היתר, כדי לחזק את השתתפות ילדים בהחלטות על תוכנית ההתערבות המתקבלות בוועדות רשמיות, הנקראות ועדות תכנון, טיפול והערכה (ות"ט). כדי להעריך עד כמה הושגה מטרה זו, נערך מחקר איכותני במודל של חקר מקרה שבחן 21 משפחות שהופנו לוועדות ועקב אחר מצבן כעבור שישה חודשים. הנתונים נאספו מראיונות עם עובדים סוציאליים,...

A national reform of child protection practice in Israel includes the ambition of strengthening children’s participation in intervention decisions carried out in formal committees, called Planning, Intervention and Evaluation Committees. A qualitative study was conducted of how well this was being achieved by following 21 case studies of families r...

A national reform of child protection practice in Israel includes the ambition of strengthening children's participation in intervention decisions carried out in formal committees, called planning, intervention and evaluation committees. A qualitative study was conducted of how well this was being achieved by following 21 case studies of families r...

This research evaluates the impact of the recent reform in the Israeli child protection practice, aimed at achieving high-quality decisions in regards to safeguarding children. These system-wide changes are towards a more analytical framework of reasoning through the utilisation of standardised tools and guidelines.

This study deals with the phenomenon of interpersonal violence among adolescents in Israel. Its main purpose is to explore the contribution of environmental factors to the tendency to behave violently within this population. The study explores the role of belonging to a certain socioeconomic status and exposure to violence in one’s residential envi...