University of Southern California

California, home to the largest foster care population in the country, has publicly declared its intention to pursue the use of so-called “predictive analytics” to foresee and presumably prevent child abuse.

During a champagne lunch Wednesday, in a sumptuous dining hall at the University of Southern California, Marilyn Flynn, the dean of the School of Social Work, took the stage. It had already been a heady day for Flynn, who has served as the school’s dean for two decades, leading it to become the single largest school of social work in the nation.

In this latest installment of our “Dollars and Priorities” series, we examine how research on child abuse and neglect could shape reform of the way the nation’s child welfare system is paid for.

If we found out a public health crisis was three to four times greater than previously known, how quickly would Congress authorize emergency spending to combat it? I certainly hope it would not wait for the next budget debate, or make the response budget neutral.

The narrative so often heard about group homes suggests that staff are cold-hearted and rules are rigid, leaving the teenagers who live there feeling like they have no freedom and no voice.

In May, three students and two teachers filed a complaint against Compton Unified School District (CUSD) for failing to accommodate students who have experienced trauma. The lawsuit calls for the school district to provide academic and counseling services to students who have experienced trauma, recognizing the trauma as a disability.

By Holden Slattery The idea of predictive analytics, where big data is crunched to better assess the likelihood of something happening, is gaining traction in the field of child protection with hot spots in Los Angeles, across the country in Pennsylvania and as far afield as New Zealand.