of children’s development (O’Brien, 2005). Elaborating on this disconnect, O’Brien (2005, p. 4) states
that “clients have consistently viewed the impact on themselves of environmental issues as a more
pressing problem than have workers.” Cameron and Freymond (2003) come to similar conclusions,
noting that in the more than 108 interviews and focus groups of Ontario child welfare clients and
service providers they conducted a general theme was the lack of incorporation of clients’ material
disadvantage into either assessments or helping strategies. Summarizing their findings, they state
that “it is a concern that the child protection interventions in our research were not particularly
congruent with the day to day needs and expectations of these children or parents” (p. 9).
The following sections provide a discussion of the most commonly identified caregiver, child,
and poverty-related needs, with implications for policy and practice. The significance of data
regarding the presenting needs of investigated children and their families is that they represent
service requirements for those who are currently in the system. Although this thesis has questioned
the utility of interventions that target only individual children and families, it is recognized that is
it equally inappropriate to ignore the individual needs of clients in the here and now, regardless of
whether the origins of these needs are individually- or structurally-based.
Caregiver Social Support and Child Welfare Response
Results of the descriptive analyses demonstrate that few social supports was by far the most common
concern endorsed by child welfare workers for cases of investigated neglect in the sample. The
high rate of children living with caregivers identified as socially isolated—half of all children in
substantiated cases and almost one-third of all children for whom neglect was unsubstantiated—
is consistent with previous research identifying social isolation as a correlate of neglect (Coohey,
1996; Gaudin, 2001) and points to the need for services that increase caregivers’ and children’s
connections with helpful others in their community. Data from the current study are consistent
with recent Canadian research assessing the needs of families known to a children’s aid society in
Ontario for reasons of neglect, from both worker and client perspectives. In this study, O’Brien