1. Risk assessment: the emperor's new clothes?
- Author
-
Wald MS and Woolverton M
- Subjects
- Child, Child Abuse legislation & jurisprudence, Child Abuse prevention & control, Child Welfare, Decision Making, Organizational, Evaluation Studies as Topic, Humans, Politics, Predictive Value of Tests, United States, Child Abuse epidemiology, Health Status Indicators
- Abstract
This article reviews the risk assessment procedures and instruments that are being used by child protection agencies. Although supportive of the concept of risk assessment, the authors argue that all current instruments have major methodological deficiencies that limit the utility of such instruments as a means of predicting future abusive or neglectful behavior. The authors suggest how risk assessment decisions should be made at each stage of a child protection investigation.
- Published
- 1990