Right Column
Structured Decision Making
Every year in California, child welfare agencies receive thousands of reports alleging abuse and/or neglect of children. In each instance, Child Protective Services (CPS) workers must make decisions that balance the important values of child safety and family integrity. To do this, child welfare workers must answer some difficult questions: Should they respond to a report of abuse and, if so, how quickly should they respond? Is the child in imminent danger? What`s the probability that the family will reabuse the child? What are the family`s strengths, and what services does the family need to reduce risk?
To assist California's child welfare workers in making these critical assessments and decisions, the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) initiated the Structured Decision Making (SDM) Project.
The SDM Project began in January 1998 and has been piloted and tested in seven California counties. The counties that volunteered to participate are: Los Angeles, Orange, Sacramento, San Bernardino, Santa Clara, Alameda and Humboldt County. County Rrepresentatives haveworked collaboratively with CDSS and the SDM contractor to develop the SDM Assessment tools and protocols.
During 1999, eight additional counties volunteered to participate in the SDM Project. These counties are Trinity, Lassen, Sutter, Monterey, San Luis Obispo, Kern, Merced, and Fresno. Since 2001, Riverside and Santa Cruz County have replaced San Bernardino and Lassen County as Project counties. Collectively, these 15 Project counties represent approximately 70 percent of the State's CPS caseload.
The contractor for the SDM Project is the Children's Research Center, a division of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD). The NCCD is an Oakland-based nonprofit organization dedicated to the improvement of decision-making systems in the field of corrections and, for the last 12 years, in the child welfare field.
The purpose of the SDM Project is to provide child welfare workers with the best tools possible to help in making critical case assessments and decisions. To accomplish this, the Project included the development and testing of methods for assessing cases, structuring decisions, and managing cases in order to minimize the trauma of child maltreatment, and to prevent its recurrence.
The Project has been conducted in two stages. During the first 18 months, efforts focused on the design and development of the major system components and decision-making tools of SDM. The second 18 months was dedicated to fine tuning system processes and decision tools, making revisions when appropriate, and conducting validation and workload studies.
What distinguishes SDM from previous methods of assessing risk is the use of a research-based risk assessment. Such assessment is a means to assist workers to classify child protective services cases according to the likelihood of future maltreatment.
The research-based risk assessment was developed by testing each factor to determine whether it was statistically related to subsequent child maltreatment. Only those factors that proved to be associated with subsequent maltreatment were then included in the model. Using such a model, child protection workers are able to accurately and consistently classify families according to the likelihood of subsequent maltreatment. Scarce treatment resources can then be allocated according to maltreatment risk, thereby improving case outcomes.
To date, the Children's Research Center has assisted or is assisting 16 states to implement the SDM model. These include New York, Michigan, Alaska, Georgia, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Ohio and Rhode Island. In Michigan, a 12-month follow-up evaluation was done to compare the outcomes for cases in SDM counties and non-SDM counties. The study revealed that formerly treated cases in SDM counties had 27 percent fewer new referrals, 54 percent fewer new substantiated allegations, 40 percent fewer children removed to foster care, and 42 percent fewer child injuries that required medical assistance than did formerly treated cases in non-SDM counties. These results indicate that when an agency is able to accurately classify families according to level of risk, they are also able to more selectively focus their resources, resulting in better outcomes for children and families.
The SDM Project is an exciting effort for California; one CDSS believes will reap many of the same positive outcomes for California's children and families that have been realized around the country.
FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
California Department of Social Services
Child Protection and Family Support Branch
744 P Street, MS 11-87
Sacramento, CA 95814
(916) 651-6160
Children's Research Center
National Council on Crime and Delinquency
426 S. Yellowstone Drive, Suite 250
Madison, WI 53719
(608) 831-8882
Fax (608) 831-6446
Website address: www.nccd-crc.org