In a piece published last week by The Imprint, Casey Family Programs Vice President David Sanders called on federal and state government to “work collaboratively toward realizing our nation’s goal of protecting vulnerable children from abuse and neglect.”
Sanders chaired the Commission to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities, which in 2016 published a report containing many recommendations on how to prevent abuse and neglect deaths.
Sanders rattled off a laundry list of actions that have occurred on the subject since CECANF finished its work; some likely prompted by the report, others simply aligned with the commission’s views.
One of Sanders’ updates caught our eye: Seven states were working toward implementation of the Rapid Safety Feedback (RSF) process, a predictive analytics strategy developed by Eckerd Kids in Hillsborough County, Fla.
In fact, Youth Services Insider has learned, the number of states is even higher.
Sanders said Florida and six other states were working toward implementation: Alaska, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Maine and Oklahoma.
According to Eckerd, there are another three: Louisiana, Tennessee and Ohio. Projects in those three states and Indiana are still in the development phase, said Bryan Lindert, senior quality director for Eckerd Kids.
Eckerd is handling coaching, training and technical assistance, and fidelity reviews for the states, Lindert said, while Eckerd’s tech partner, Mindshare, is building in “the prediction piece” for each state.
Illinois and Ohio are funding their own development, according to Lindert. Implementation of RSF in the other states has been funded by Casey Family Programs, the National Foundation for Youth or both.
RSF combines a baseline of serious risk factors with real-time quality assurance (QA) in an effort to prevent deaths from abuse and neglect. It begins with a study to identify common factors in the abuse- and neglect-related deaths a system has suffered, which establishes the group of children that need a custom case management plan.
In the original RSF, for Hillsborough County, the process honed in on children under the age of three who were left with their parents. For children who fit that description, an extra layer of monitoring that focused on nine questions was added. (Click here to read more about the process.)
CECANF singled out Rapid Safety Feedback as a promising development in the use of predictive analytics in child welfare, but it got its first national endorsement from another advisory body. In 2014, the blue ribbon commission tasked with planning reform of the Los Angeles County child welfare system recommended that the county adopt RSF.
It appears from Sanders’ report that California is putting together its own version of Rapid Safety Feedback. He said the state has created a Multidisciplinary Review Team “to review all fatality and near fatality reports to collect and record data to identify risk factors and prevent future deaths.”
Sanders cites another eight states that are crafting “state fatality prevention plans” with the Three Branch Institute on Improving Child Safety and Preventing Child Fatalities. They are: Alabama, Oregon, Wisconsin, Tennessee, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland and Kentucky.
