Decision making in child protective services: A risky business?

Risk Analysis

Volumn 33, Issue 9, 2013, Pages 1636-1649

  Camasso, Michael J ^a   Jagannathan, Radha ^b  

^a RUTGERS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b RUTGERS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Child Protective Services; Hazard; Risk assessment

Indexed keywords

ASSESSMENT STRATEGIES; CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES; DECISION ERRORS; GENERAL PUBLICS; HAZARD EVALUATION; RECEIVER OPERATING CHARACTERISTIC CURVES; RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY; RISKY BUSINESS;

HAZARDS; PHYSIOLOGY; RISK ANALYSIS; SAFETY ENGINEERING;

RISK ASSESSMENT;

CHILD; CHILD WELFARE; DECISION MAKING; HAZARD; PERCEPTION; RISK ASSESSMENT;

UNITED STATES;

ADOLESCENT; ARTICLE; CHILD; CHILD ABUSE; CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES; CHILD WELFARE; DECISION MAKING; GOVERNMENT; HAZARD; HUMAN; INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION; METHODOLOGY; PERCEPTION; PREDICTIVE VALUE; RECEIVER OPERATING CHARACTERISTIC; RISK ASSESSMENT; UNITED STATES; VIOLENCE;

CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES; HAZARD; RISK ASSESSMENT;

ADOLESCENT; CHILD; CHILD ABUSE; CHILD WELFARE; COMMUNICATION; DECISION MAKING; FEDERAL GOVERNMENT; HUMANS; PERCEPTION; PREDICTIVE VALUE OF TESTS; RISK ASSESSMENT; ROC CURVE; STATE GOVERNMENT; UNITED STATES; VIOLENCE;

EID: 84884202961     PISSN: 02724332     EISSN: 15396924     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1539-6924.2012.01931.x     Document Type: Article

References (87)

1. Child Welfare Information Gateway. Child Maltreatment 2010: Summary of Key Findings. Washington, DC: Children's Bureau/ACYF, May 2012.
2. National Clearinghouse on Child Abuse and Neglect Information. Highlights from Child Maltreatment 1999, 2001. Available at: http://www.calib.com/nccanch/pubs/factsheets/canstats.cfm, Accessed November 14, 2011.
3. Loury MR. Commentary: How we can better protect children from abuse and neglect. Future of Children, 1998; 8:123-126.
4. Noonan KG, Sabel CF, Simon WH. Legal accountability in the service-based welfare state: Lessons from child welfare reform. Law & Social Inquiry, 2009; 34(3):523-568.
5. Jagannathan R, Camasso MJ. The institutionalization of risk as moral outrage in child protective services. Children and Youth Services Review, 2011; 33:894-900.
6. Gainsborough JF. Scandalous Politics: Child Welfare Policy in the States. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2010.
7. Nelson BS. Making an Issue of Child Abuse: Political Agenda Setting for Social Problems. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
8. Mezey SG. Pitiful Plaintiffs: Child Welfare Litigation and the Federal Courts. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000. Available at: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/42812830, Accessed September 20, 2011.
9. Golden OA. Reforming Child Welfare. Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press, 2009. Available at: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/311768820, Accessed July 15, 2011.
10. Baumgartner FR, Jones BD. Agendas and Instability in American Politics, 2nd ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
11. Regehr C, Hemsworth D, Leslie B, Howe P, Chau S. Predictors of post-traumatic distress in child welfare workers: A linear structural equation model. Children and Youth Services Review, 2004; 26:331-346.
12. LeBlanc VR, Regehr C, Shlonsky A, Bogo M. Stress responses and decision making in child protection workers faced with high conflict situations. Child Abuse & Neglect, 2012; 36:404-412.
13. Schorr AL. The bleak prospect for public child welfare. Social Service Review, 2000; 74: 124-136.
14. Lindsey D. The Welfare of Children, 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
15. Price T. Child welfare reform: The issues. CQ Researcher, 2005; 15:347-364.
16. Schwartz IM, Jones PR, Schwartz DR, Obradovic Z. Improving social work practice through the use of technology and advanced research methods. Pp. 214-231 in Lindsey D, Shlonsky A (eds). Child Welfare Research: Advances for Practice and Policy. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008.
17. Baird C, Wagner D, Neuenfeldt D. Actuarial Risk Assessment and Case Management in Child Abuse and Neglect. Sixth Annual Roundtable on CPS Risk Assessment. Washington, DC: American Child Welfare Association, 1991.
18. Baird C, Wagner D. The relative validity of actuarial- and consensus-based risk assessment systems. Children and Youth Services Review, 2000; 22(11-12):839-871.
19. Shlonsky A, Wagner D. The next step: Integrating actuarial risk assessment and clinical judgment into an evidence-based practice framework in CPS case management. Children and Youth Services Review, 2005; 27(4):409-427.
20. English D, Marshall DB, Brummel SC, Coghlan LK. Decision-Making in Child Protective Services: A Study of Effectiveness: Final Report: Phase 1: Quantitative Analysis. Olympia, WA: Washington State Department of Social and Health Services, 1998.
21. DePanfilis D, Girvin H. Investigating child maltreatment in out-of-home care: Barriers to effective decision-making. Children and Youth Services Review, 2005; 27(4):353-374.
22. Lyons P, Doueck HJ, Wodarski JS. Risk assessment for child protective services: A review of the empirical literature on instrument performance. Social Work Research, 1996; 20(3):143-155.
23. English DJ, Marshall DB, Coghlan L, Brummel S, Orme M. Causes and consequences of the substantiation decision in Washington State Child Protective Services. Children and Youth Services Review, 2002; 24(11):817-851.
24. Freitag R, Park K. The Structured Decision Making Model: An Evidenced-Based Approach to Human Services. Madison, WI: Children's Research Center, 2008.
25. Kim AK, Brooks D, Kim H, Nissly J. Structured Decision Making and Child Welfare Service Delivery Project. Berkeley, CA: University of California at Berkeley, California Social Work Education Center, 2008.
26. Schene PA. Past, present, and future roles of child protective services. Future of Children / Center for the Future of Children, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, 1998; 8(1):23-38.
27. 3. Child Welfare Information Gateway. How the Child Welfare System Work: Factsheet. Washington, DC. Available at: http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/can_info_packet.pdf, Accessed July 15, 2011.
28. Camerer C, Weber M. Recent developments in modeling preferences: Uncertainty and ambiguity. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 1992; 5:325-370.
29. Wulczyn F, Epidemiological perspectives on maltreatment prevention. Future of Children, 2009; 19(2):39-66.
30. Lave CA, March JG. An Introduction to Models in the Social Sciences. New York: Harper & Row, 1975.
31. Winterfeldt D von, Edwards W. Decision Analysis and Behavioral Research. Cambridge Cambridgeshire, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
32. Janchill MP. Guidelines for decision-making in child welfare: Case assessment, service planning, and appropriateness in service selection. New York: Human Services Workshop, 1981.
33. Hornby Helaine. Risk Assessment in Child Protective Services: 3 Issues in Field Implementation. Portland, ME: University of Southern Maine, Human Services Development Institute, 1989.
34. Besharov DJ. Recognizing Child Abuse: A Guide for the Concerned. New York: Free Press, A Division of Simon and Schuster, Inc., 1990 Available at: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/20671624, Accessed October 20, 2011.
35. Morton TD, Holder W. Decision Making in Children's Protective Services: Advancing the State of the Art. Duluth, GA: National Resource Center on Child Maltreatment, 1997.
36. Mather JH, Lager PB, Harris N. Child Welfare: Policies and Best Practices, 2nd ed. Belmont, CA: Thomson Brooks/Cole, 2007.
37. Besharov D. Recognizing Child Abuse: Trainer's Manual and Training Videos. University of Maryland, Welfare Reform Academy, 2008. Available at: http://www.welfareacademy.org/childabusetraining/manual/index.shtml, Accessed October 20, 2011.
38. Brittain C, Hunt DE (eds). Helping in Child Protective Services: A Competency-Based Casework Handbook, 2nd ed. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
39. Dubowitz H, DePanfilis D (eds). Handbook for Child Protection Practice. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2000.
40. Myers JEB, Berliner LA, Briere J, Hendrix CT, Reid T, Jenny C. The APSAC Handbook on Child Maltreatment, 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2002.
41. National Center for the Prosecution of Child Abuse. Investigation and Prosecution of Child Abuse, 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2004.
42. Field T, Winterfeld A. Tough Problems, Tough Choices: Guidelines for Needs-Based Service Planning in Child Welfare. Englewood, CO: American Humane Association, 2003.
43. Goldman J, Salus MK, Wolcott D, Kennedy KY. A Coordinated Response to Child Abuse and Neglect: The Foundation for Practice. Washington, DC: USDHHS, ACF, Children's Bureau, Office of Child Abuse and Neglect, 2003. Available at: http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/usermanuals/foundation/foundation.pdf, Accessed August 15, 2011.
44. DePanfilis D, Salus MK. Child Protective Services: A Guide for Caseworkers. Washington, DC: USDHHS, ACF, Children's Bureau, Office of Child Abuse and Neglect, 2003.
45. Salus MK. Supervising Child Protective Services Caseworkers. Washington, DC: USDHHS, ACF, Children's Bureau, Office of Child Abuse and Neglect, 2004. Available at: http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/usermanuals/supercps/supercps.pdf, Accessed January 30, 2011.
46. Wright G. Behavioral Decision Theory: An Introduction. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1984.
47. Waldfogel J. Rethinking the paradigm for child protection. Future of Children, 1998; 8(1):104-119.
48. Ross T. Child Welfare: The Challenges of Collaboration. Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press. Retrieved from http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/275150362, 2008.
49. Lilienfeld DE, Stolley PD (eds). Foundations of Epidemiology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
50. Lindsey D. The Welfare of Children. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
51. Ruscio J. Information integration in child welfare cases: An introduction to statistical decision making. Child Maltreatment, 1998; 3(2):143-156.
52. Scheff T. Decision rules and types of error and their consequences in medical diagnosis. Pp. 309-323 in Friedson E, Lorber J. (eds). Medical Men and Their Work. Chicago: Aldine de Gruyter, 1972.
53. Anechiarico F, Jacobs JB. The pursuit of absolute integrity: How corruption control makes government ineffective. Studies in Crime and Justice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
54. We thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing up this serious imbalance in the CPS oversight function.
55. Spratt T. Decision making by senior social workers at point of first referral. British Journal of Social Work, 2000; 30(5):597-618.
56. Gibbons J, Conroy S, Bell C. Operating the child protection system: A study of Child Protection practices in English local authorities. Studies in Child Protection. London: HMSO, 1995.
57. Bertelli AM. Strategy and accountability: Structural reform litigation and public management. Public Administration Review, 2004; 64(1):28-42.
58. Camasso MJ, Jagannathan R. New Jersey's outrage driven Child Protective Services (CPS) system. Journal of Public Child Welfare, 2013; 7.
59. Wilson D. The Decline of Child Maltreatment. The Sounding Board. Child Welfare Information Gateway: USDHHS, ACF, Children's Bureau, 2010. Available at: http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/.
60. Behn RD. Rethinking Democratic Accountability. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2001.
61. Gersick CJG. Time and transition in work teams: Toward a new model of group development. Academy of Management Journal, 1988; 31:9-41.
62. Covello V, Sandman PM, Slovic P. Risk Communication, Risk Statistics, and Risk Comparisons: A Manual for Plant Managers. Washington, DC, 1988.
63. Kasperson RE. Six propositions of public participation and their relevance for risk communication. Risk Analysis, 1986; 6:275-281.
64. Gambrill E. Decision making in child welfare: Constraints and potentials. Pp. 175-194 in Lindsey D, Shlonsky A (eds). Child Welfare Research: Advances for Practice and Policy. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008.
65. Littell JH. Evidence-based or biased? The quality of published reviews of evidence-based practices. Children and Youth Services Review, 2008; 30:1299-1317.
66. Petrosino A, Boruch RF, Soydan H, Duggan L, Sanchez-Meca J. Meeting the challenges of evidence-based policy: The Campbell Collaboration. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, 2001; 578(1):14-34.
67. Boruch R. Preface: Better evaluation for evidence-based policy: Place randomized trials in education, criminology, welfare, and health. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, 2005; 599:6-18.
68. Johnson W. The risk assessment wars: A commentary: Response to "Evaluating the effectiveness of actuarial risk assessment models." Children and Youth Services Review, 2006; 28(6):704-714.
69. Morton TD. The risk wars. Commentary, 2003.
70. Angrist JD, Imbens GW, Rubin DB. Identification of causal effects using instrumental variables. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 1996; 91: 444-455.
71. McDonald TP, Poertner J, Harris G. Predicting placement in foster care: A comparison of logistic regression and neural network analysis. Journal of Social Service Research, 2001; 28(2):1-20.
72. Johnson MA, Brown CH, Wells SJ. Using classification and regression trees (CART) to support worker decision making. Social Work Research, 2002; 26(1):19-29.
73. Schwartz D, Kaufman A, Schwartz I. Computational intelligence techniques for risk assessment and decision support. Children and Youth Services Review, 2004; 26(11):1081-1095.
74. Andrews F, Morgan JN, Sonquist JA. Multiple Classification Analysis. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, Survey Research Center, 1967.
75. Shook J, Sarri R. Structured decision making in juvenile justice: Judges' and probation officers' perceptions and use. Children and Youth Services Review, 2007; 29(10):1335-1351.
76. Turner DA. An intuitive approach to receiver operating characteristic curve analysis. Journal of Nuclear Medicine, 1978; 19(2):213-220.
77. Hanley JA, McNeil BJ. The meaning and use of the area under a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. Radiology, 1982; 143(1):29-36.
78. National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect (ed). Symposium on Risk Assessment in Child Protective Services. Vols. 1, 2, 3, 4. Washington, DC: National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect (DHHS), 1991.
79. Slovic P. Perception of risk. Science, 1987; 236:280-285.
80. Camasso MJ, Jagannathan R. Prediction accuracy of the Washington and Illinois risk assessment instruments: An application of receiver operating characteristic curve analysis. Social Work Research, 1995; 19:174-183.
81. Murphy JM, Berwick DM, Weinstein MC, Borus JF, Budman SH, Klerman GL. Performance of screening and diagnostic tests: Application of receiver operating characteristic analysis. Arch Gen Psychiatry, 1987; 44(6):550-555.
82. Brintall M. Caseloads, performance, and street-level bureaucracy. Urban Affairs Quarterly, 1981; 16:281-298.
83. Gambrill E, Shlonsky A. The need for comprehensive risk management systems in child welfare. Children and Youth Services Review, 2001; 23(1):79-107.
84. Rzepnicki TL, Johnson PR. Examining decision errors in child protection: A new application of root cause analysis. Children and Youth Services Review, 2005; 27(4):393-407.
85. Osmo R, Benbenishty R. Children at risk: Rationales for risk assessments and interventions. Children and Youth Services Review, 2004; 26:1155-1173.
86. Riehl C, Harfeld A, Weichel E, Carr J. State Secrecy and Child Deaths in the U.S, 2nd ed. San Diego, CA: Children's Advocacy Institute of the University of San Diego School of Law, 2012. Available at: http://caichildlaw.org/Misc/StateSecrecy2ndEd.pdf, Accessed October 1, 2012.
87. U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services, Administration for Children & Families. Justification of Estimates for AppropriationsCommittees, Fiscal Year 2012. Washington, DC. 123-124. Available at: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/opre/acf_perfplan/ann_per/reports/2012_perf_plan.pdf, Accessed October 1, 2012.