Since the late 1980s, the Finnish legislation of child protection has emphasized the role of supportive and voluntary in-home services as part of child protection services. Nevertheless, the need to place children in out-of-home care has remained and the number of placements has been high, resulting in roughly one percent of children under the age of 18 being in out-of-home care. When the Social Welfare Act was introduced in 2015, one of its aims was to provide preventative and early services to children and families so that the services provided by the Child Welfare Act would not be so much needed. As a consequence of the legislative changes, social workers are now required to make assessments of ‘the service needs’ of children and families and direct them either to family services or child protection. Their task is, in a way, to ‘process children and families’ into and out of services. Selecting is a complex task for any ‘street level bureaucrat’ but for social workers it is especially challenging due to the nature of present legislation and the emphasis on voluntary in-home services both in family services and child protection.

The objective of this study is to examine on what grounds social workers decide whether children’s and families’ needs would be best met by family services (Social Welfare Act) or child protection (Child Welfare Act). It is empirically based on a survey of social workers (N=373) and group interviews (28 groups with 120 social workers) in different parts of Finland. The group interviews were based on a vignette of a realistic case, which the social workers (and, in some groups, other professionals involved in assessments) were asked to elaborate regarding the choice between these two service systems.

The findings highlight the existence and use of local guidelines of how to select children and parents to services. Some guidelines are formally written as organizational guidelines whereas some are established in practice by assessment teams and team leaders. The decisive element appears to be the attitudes of parents towards services: their reluctance to receive services would direct the family to child protection services. Children’s attitudes, on the other hand, are not given so much attention. The nature of the problems in the families was less important. However, if the problems were of such nature that out-of-home placements were seen to be needed, the child would be selected to child protection services. This selection base profiles child protection as being for involuntary, out-of-home placements, which is a ‘new’ profile for child protection as the role of the voluntary in-home services is more or less ruled out.

Regarding the conclusions of this study, the local contexts of putting policy and legislation into practice are important to be taken into account when reforming policy and legislation. It is especially important if legislation gives much leeway for practice-based interpretations.