Abstract
The modern family has been defined as paradoxical: on the one hand, there is a normative representation of infancy as a specific age category that is marked by vulnerability and a need for nurturing, care, and affection. On the other hand, there are too many instances of parental abuse and neglect. This chapter reviews the state of the art in the study of caseworkers' psychosocial processes underlying the out-of-home placement decision following instances of child maltreatment by integrating existing literature on both child protection and social psychology. It reviews and summarizes cues from empirical studies sustaining the role played by the psychosocial variables of caseworkers involved in out-of-home placement decisions. The chapter describes social-psychological decision-making models and presents an overview of the main ideas from these models to apply to the study of decision-making in the area of child protection. It presents the principal results of a recent empirically tested model of the residential care placement decision through which the caseworker integrates those multiple psychosocial factors in the decision process.