Read Aloud the Text Content

This audio was created by Woord's Text to Speech service by content creators from all around the world.

Text Content or SSML code:

Studies that pick out factors most commonly used for decision-making in order to provide pro-formas and checklists for decision-making may be falling into the trap of simply reproducing and further institutionalising current working practices (Wald and Woolverton, 1990). In other words, they represent accumulated practice wisdom (Jones, 1993). An alternative approach that has been used to develop actuarial assessment instruments looks at the progress of families through the child welfare system and tracks outcomes such as incidents of re-abuse. This leads to the identification of factors empirically linked to risk (or at least risk defined and identified by child protection systems) and instruments with stronger claims to validity than those that reproduce practice wisdom (Gambrill and Shlonsky, 2000). Findings from quantitative research into decision-making factors in social work assessment have been used to help produce formal tools for risk assessment by child protection services, particularly in the US.