Partnering With Parents: Reviewing the Evidence for Motivational Interviewing in Child Welfare

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2019

Department

Social Work

Abstract

Child welfare workers (CWWs) face challenges to engaging families, including initial parental resistance, service plan noncompliance and other barriers. Adopting a motivational interviewing (MI) framework may improve engagement and collaboration between CWWs and parents, thereby leading to better child welfare (CW) outcomes. This comprehensive narrative review identifies the use of MI in CW, the outcomes of MI use and the gaps in the literature. Of the 16 articles that met inclusion criteria for our search, 12 suggested MI’s value in parenting skills, parent/child mental health, retention in services, substance use, and CW recidivism. Four of these studies specifically focused on CWW. Future studies should examine specific CW outcomes such as reunification, parent/child relationships, recidivism and parent/child mental health.

Publication Title

Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services

Volume

100

Issue

1

First Page

52

Last Page

67

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