Cultural Responsiveness in Child Protection: Stakeholders and Parental Perceptions of Working Children and Culture-appropriate Assessment in Ghana

Abstract

Abstract There is a need to understand cultural responsiveness in the field of child protection and accommodate best interests of the child to local contexts. This research addresses cultural responsiveness in social work interventions as part of child protection services in cases of ‘child labour’ in rural and urban Ghana. The sample size of this study is sixty participants (thirty men and thirty women), and it is made up of social workers and other child welfare practitioners in government agencies; non-governmental organisations; and parents whose children were involved in child labour as well as parents whose children were not. Using semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions and participant observation as methods of data collection, participants included parents (ten), stakeholders (ten), focus groups (thirty people); and parental interviews in participant observation (ten) were conducted to gather the needed data with purposive sampling across rural and urban communities in Ghana. Applying a framework approach as the main qualitative data analysis approach, interviews were recorded and transcribed. Overall, the research finds that professionals need to immerse themselves in different cultural practices and communication whilst considering different working definitions for parenting and creating a mission and vision statement that embraces different cultures.