As The Chronicle of Social Change has been reporting over the past two years, various jurisdictions have been exploring new tools to focus the attention of child welfare systems on the children most at risk of subsequent abuse or neglect. The mainstream media has begun to notice, as demonstrated by CNBC’s recent report on Los Angeles’ contract with software company SAS to develop such a tool for its child welfare system.
These new approaches generally rely on predictive analytics, which means using patterns in data to predict future outcomes. Despite the recent media coverage, there is still some confusion about what is meant by this term, how it differs from current approaches like Structured Decision Making (SDM), and the distinctions between the various new approaches.
To understand these new approaches, it is important to understand how child protective services (CPS) works now. I can describe the process in the District of Columbia, where I once served as a caseworker.
CPS workers in the District use checklists to interview children, parents, teachers, and others about an allegation of abuse and neglect. They generally rely on the verbal answers to these questions, although they do receive access to data from schools and public assistance agencies.
To continue reading this article by Marie K. Cohen, go to: https://chronicleofsocialchang...d-welfare-risk/15442
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