Discretion as Moral Navigation: How Saudi Child Protection Helpline Workers Navigate Law, Religion, and Organisational Hierarchy

Abstract

This study explores how child protection practitioners in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) interpret and exercise discretion when responding to suspected child abuse through national helpline services. It suggests that frontline decision-making is not solely the result of procedural steps but involves situated judgment where practitioners operate within multiple sources of authority: statutory child protection duties, Sharia-based expectations, organisational hierarchy, and cultural norms surrounding family privacy, guardianship, and honour. The study employs a descriptive–interpretive qualitative design, using semi-structured interviews and vignette-based scenarios with helpline workers in the National Family Safety Programme (NFSP) and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development’s Social Protection Department (MHRSD). Data were analysed thematically, guided by Street-Level Bureaucracy (SLB) and Decision-Making Ecology (DME), along with analytic concepts of legal pluralism, moral navigation, upward and deferred discretion, and emotional labour to explore how practitioners understand and perform their roles. The findings identify three interconnected patterns. First, practitioners navigate a morally plural environment in which decisions must remain acceptable to multiple audiences (including supervisors, courts, families, and wider community expectations), resulting in moral navigation through reframing, adaptation, or cautious escalation. Second, discretion is shaped by bureaucratic organisational structures, with decisions frequently postponed or transferred upward through practices of upward discretion and deferred discretion to secure endorsement, manage uncertainty, and reduce exposure to blame or reversal. Third, practitioners engage in culturally resonant communication and sustained emotional labour, using religious language, appealing to parental duty, and referencing communal responsibility to maintain caller encouragement, reduce resistance, and keep protective options open. The study offers an empirically grounded account of how discretion is understood and enacted within Saudi child protection helplines. It shows that discretionary practice is a relational and organisationally mediated process of moral navigation, influenced by timing, organisational authority, emotional labour, and the moral expectations embedded in a legally plural system. The findings have implications for supervision, organisational support, and training in culturally sensitive communication to enhance practitioner confidence and the perceived legitimacy of child protection processes.