Cudjoe, Ebenezer and Abdullah, Alhassan and Frimpong-Manso, Kwabena and Agbadi, Pascal and Deliege, Antoine (2024) Assessing Child Maintenance Cases in Ghana: What Do Social Workers Consider? Journal of Social Service Research. DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/01488376.2024.2362763
Cudjoe, Ebenezer and Abdullah, Alhassan and Frimpong-Manso, Kwabena and Agbadi, Pascal and Deliege, Antoine (2024) Assessing Child Maintenance Cases in Ghana: What Do Social Workers Consider? Journal of Social Service Research. DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/01488376.2024.2362763
Cudjoe, Ebenezer and Abdullah, Alhassan and Frimpong-Manso, Kwabena and Agbadi, Pascal and Deliege, Antoine (2024) Assessing Child Maintenance Cases in Ghana: What Do Social Workers Consider? Journal of Social Service Research. DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/01488376.2024.2362763
Abstract
While one of the key responsibilities of social services in Ghana is to conduct maintenance arrangements so that the nonresident parent is committed to making financial contributions to the well-being of the child, little is known about what informs social workers’ assessments in child maintenance cases. The aim of this study was to determine what social workers consider when undertaking child maintenance assessments. A qualitative practice research study was conducted with 13 social workers and 12 parents involved in a child maintenance case with three agencies of the Department of Social Welfare and Community Development in Ghana. The study showed that corroborating the existence of nonpayment for maintenance in the family is the first step in assessing other factors, such as the parent’s income, occupational status and maintenance amount. Even after the maintenance amount was decided upon, social workers were often unable to follow-up on nonresident parents to ensure that they complied with the maintenance arrangements. Given that no assessment instrument exists in Ghana for addressing child maintenance cases, the study’s findings can provide useful information that can aid in the development of an instrument or framework to assist social workers in their assessments.
Item Type: | Article |
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Uncontrolled Keywords: | Child maintenance; child maintenance assessment; social workers; nonresident parents; Ghana |
SWORD Depositor: | Unnamed user with email elements@essex.ac.uk |
Depositing User: | Unnamed user with email elements@essex.ac.uk |
Date Deposited: | 19 Jul 2024 09:48 |
Last Modified: | 19 Jul 2024 09:49 |
URI: | http://repository.essex.ac.uk/id/eprint/38565 |
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Licence: Creative Commons: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0