Auditor general praises county for its child welfare screening

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Pennsylvania’s auditor general, who recently issued a report critical of the state’s child welfare system, on Wednesday praised Allegheny County’s use of technology in screening for potential child neglect.

“While county children and youth services agencies statewide are struggling to work within a broken system, Allegheny County is attempting to use technology so it can more efficiently deploy the resources it has,” Auditor General Eugene DePasquale said in a statement following a visit to the county’s Department of Human Services.

He was praising the Allegheny Family Screening Tool, which has been in use for just over a year, and uses an algorithm to aid caseworkers who screen thousands of calls every year that deal with possible child neglect.

The predictive risk modeling tool uses more than 100 variables — such as previous child welfare and criminal justice involvement — to generate a score to predict the likelihood of a re-referral or home removal for a child.

Although Allegheny County has more data available to it than most other counties and even though the screening tool had significant funding from local foundations to aid in its development, other counties could use similar tools, said Marc Cherna, director of the Allegheny County Department of Human Services

“They could do it differently... the state has a lot of data,” such as information about public benefits and child welfare system involvement that are used in Dauphin, Delaware, Erie, Allegheny County’s algorithm, Fayette, Luzerne, Monroe, Mr. Cherna said. Philadelphia and York counties.

“The format could be similar,” Mr. DePasquale said. The auditor also met with

Last month, Mr. Youth Support Partners, DePasquale issued a report made up of child-welfare system critical of the state’s child alumni who now work welfare system, saying the with young people currently average caseworker was in the system. overworked and underpaid in a complex, paperwork-intensive job. The report examined Allegheny, Bucks, Cambria, Centre, Crawford,