The use of the Shye's systemic quality life model in the examination of child protection officers decision

The paper presents the results of a systematic study of the factors that child protection officers consider in their decisions of whether or not to remove children at risk from their homes. A sample of 194 child protection officers in Israel completed a questionnaire constructed on the basis of Shye's Systemic Quality of Life Model (1979, 1985), which taps the psychological, physical, social, and cultural dimensions of the quality of life. Questions were answered on 368 children fairly evenly divided between those they decided to remove from home and those they decided to keep at home. The findings show 85% of the decisions were correctly classified on the basis of the model, and show close associations between the quality of life dimensions and the decisions. The workers evaluated both the current quality of life and their parents' enabling good quality of life as higher among the children whom they recommended keeping at home than among those they recommended removing. Similarly, they predicted that the children they recommended remain would have a higher quality of life at home in the future than those they recommended be removed. The psychological dimension of the quality of life contributed more to the decision than the physical, and these more than the social and cultural.