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Good practice Imported

Allegheny Family Screening Tool (USA)

United States of America · Pittsburgh · See the United States of America profile · See the Pittsburgh profile

Evidence: Observational / pre–post Top 36% 67/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Since 2016 Allegheny County has used a predictive risk model to support child-maltreatment call screening. Evaluations found it narrowed racial gaps in investigation rates, but independent studies also flag bias — a transparent, contested case.

Allegheny Family Screening Tool (USA)

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
Allegheny County Department of Human Services
Keywords
Data, forecasting & decision support, child welfare, decision support, predictive risk modelling

Context

The Allegheny Family Screening Tool (AFST) helps call-screening staff in Allegheny County's child-protective services by integrating hundreds of administrative data elements into a 'Family Screening Score' predicting future child-welfare involvement. It has been in use since 2016.

Results

Official evaluations found the tool decreased investigations of low-risk referrals, increased them for high-risk referrals, and reduced the racial gap in investigation rates without raising worker burden. Independent research has separately flagged racial bias in the tool's predicted decisions, which workers partly corrected by overriding the tool.

Conclusions

AFST is notable for being unusually transparent and externally evaluated, while remaining genuinely contested — a realistic picture of predictive risk models in high-stakes social services.

Implementation

Implementation detail (cost, timeline, staffing, conditions for success) is not yet available for this practice.

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Data sources

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