California, home to the largest foster care population in the country, has publicly declared its intention to pursue the use of so-called “predictive analytics” to foresee and presumably prevent child abuse.
California Department of Social Services (CDSS) Deputy Director Greg Rose, who oversees the state’s foster care system, says that the state’s new predictive risk modeling project is designed to give social workers better information about past child welfare cases when they first field a call about child abuse and neglect.
“There’s data that we ought to be better utilizing,” Rose said.
The proof-of -concept project comes at a time when the lure of using complex algorithms and data models to anticipate which children are at greatest risk of being abused is strong. Leaders associated with the initiative are hoping that an emphasis on transparency will assuage the fears of critics who say that predictive analytics is a scary proposition straight out of a dystopian science-fiction tale. The use of predictive risk modeling, they say, could lead to heightened scrutiny of poor families of color, with more children removed from at-risk families based on a mysterious mathematical formula.
“Just because you’re poor, you have multiple children and you’re on public benefits, all of a sudden you’re at risk; we already know that,” said Kathy Icenhower, CEO of SHIELDS for Families, an organization that works with families in South Los Angeles. “That doesn’t mean that everybody that meets those criteria should be suspected of child abuse or neglect.”
Despite these well-known concerns, California is forging ahead in development of a tool of its own.
With a $300,000 grant from the California Department of Social Services and the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, a team of researchers led by Emily Putnam-Hornstein, co-director of the Children’s Data Network at the University of Southern California, is building and testing a data analytics tool to help child abuse investigators gauge the risk of maltreatment when a report of child abuse or neglect is made.
To read the full report go HERE
Comments (1)