Feely Megan, Bosk Emily Adlin
School of Social Work, University of Connecticut, West Hartford, USA.
Rutgers University School of Social Work, New Brunswick, USA.
Race Soc Probl. 2021;13(1):49-62. doi: 10.1007/s12552-021-09313-8. Epub 2021 Feb 21.
The racial and ethnic disproportionality and disparity in the child protective system (CPS) has been a concern for decades. Structural factors strongly influence engagement with the child welfare system and families experiencing poverty or financial hardship are at a heightened risk. The economic factors influencing child welfare involvement are further complicated by structural racism which has resulted in a greater prevalence of poverty and financial hardship for families who are Black, Native American or Alaska Native (Indigenous), or and Latino/Hispanic (Latino) and their communities. The multiple decision points within CPS are an opportunity to reify or correct for bias in child welfare outcomes. One major effort to eliminate racial disparities and disproportionalities has been to enact standardized decision-making procedures that aim to control for implicit or explicit bias in CPS. The Structured Decision-Making Model's (SDM) actuarial-based risk assessment (RA) is the gold-standard of these efforts. In this conceptual article, we ask (1) How are structural factors accounted for in assessment of risk within CPS? and (2) What are the consequences when structural factors are left out of risk assessments procedures? We posit that the exclusion of race, ethnicity, and economic factors from the RA has inflated the importance of variables that become proxies for these factors, resulting in inaccurate assessments of risk. The construction of this tool reflects how structural racism has been overlooked as an important cause of disproportionality in CPS, with interventions then focused on individual workers and cases, rather than the system at large. We suggest a new framework for thinking about risk, the structural risk perspective, and call for a revisioning of assessment of risk within child welfare that acknowledges the social determinants of CPS involvement.
儿童保护系统（CPS）中的种族和族裔不均衡及差异问题已存在数十年，一直备受关注。结构因素对儿童福利系统的参与有着重大影响，贫困或经济困难家庭面临的风险更高。影响儿童福利参与的经济因素因结构性种族主义而更加复杂，结构性种族主义导致黑人、美洲原住民或阿拉斯加原住民（原住民）以及拉丁裔/西班牙裔（拉丁裔）家庭及其社区中贫困和经济困难的情况更为普遍。儿童保护系统内的多个决策点是强化或纠正儿童福利结果中偏见的契机。消除种族差异和不均衡的一项主要努力是制定标准化决策程序，旨在控制儿童保护系统中隐含或明确的偏见。结构化决策模型（SDM）基于精算的风险评估（RA）是这些努力的黄金标准。在这篇概念性文章中，我们提出两个问题：（1）在儿童保护系统的风险评估中，结构因素是如何被考虑的？（2）如果在风险评估程序中忽略结构因素会有什么后果？我们认为，风险评估中排除种族、族裔和经济因素，夸大了替代这些因素的变量的重要性，导致对风险的评估不准确。这个工具的构建反映出结构性种族主义作为儿童保护系统不均衡的一个重要原因被忽视了，随后的干预措施集中在个体工作人员和个案上，而非整个系统。我们提出一个思考风险的新框架，即结构风险视角，并呼吁重新审视儿童福利中的风险评估，承认儿童保护系统参与的社会决定因素。
