Motivational Interviewing in Child Welfare Services: A Systematic Review

Families in the child welfare (CW) system who cannot be engaged in services are at high risk of negative outcomes. As motivational interviewing (MI) has been shown to improve engagement in similar contexts. This study aimed to systematically review MI with CW families as well as MI training with CW...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Child maltreatment 2020-08, Vol.25 (3), p.263-276
Main Authors: Hall, Martin T., Sears, Jeanelle, Walton, Matthew T.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Child placement
Child welfare
Children
Empathy
Evidence-based medicine
Families & family life
Family (Sociological Unit)
High risk
Interviews
Meta Analysis
Motivation
Motivational interviewing
Professional training
Self Efficacy
Social education
Social work
Social work education
Social workers
Student Motivation
Students
Systematic review
Trainees
Training
Treatment methods
Welfare services
Work
Workers
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Description
Summary:Families in the child welfare (CW) system who cannot be engaged in services are at high risk of negative outcomes. As motivational interviewing (MI) has been shown to improve engagement in similar contexts. This study aimed to systematically review MI with CW families as well as MI training with CW workers and social work students training to become CW workers. The review used Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines and searched multiple databases in June 2018. In September 2019, the initial search was repeated with additional searches to identify gray literature. Eight studies described the acquisition of MI among CW workers or student trainees, and 11 studies evaluated the impact of MI on families in CW. MI’s impact on some family outcomes, such as engagement in services, was mixed, though MI paired with other evidence-based treatments showed positive effects. With regard to training CW workers and students in MI, differences in training duration, intensity, and modality make conclusions difficult, though trainees generally described MI favorably and some studies showed training increased worker empathy and self-efficacy. Importantly, few published studies have evaluated whether MI-trained CW workers impact out-of-home-care placement, and no studies have evaluated their impact on maltreatment.
ISSN:1077-5595
1552-6119
DOI:10.1177/1077559519893471