An examination of recent federal and philanthropic funding for child welfare research in the United States

Simon, June; Hong, Jeeyeon; Pecora, Peter J.; Cloepfil, Geoffrey; Gillespie, Troy; Parker, Elizabeth M.; Klein, Reed; Garcia, Thalia; Hardy, Mariah

doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2022.106779

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 17 publications

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“…Child welfare (CW) agencies in the United States are increasingly facing severely limited resources, burdensome workloads, and high staff turnover and have turned towards algorithmic systems as they promise to allocate resources more efficiently and fairly [43,75,104] and offer them a means to "do more with less" [67,94]. These agencies also rely on federal and philanthropic funding to support their operations with more grant funding opportunities being made available to agencies that invest in innovative evidence-based programs and systems reform and integration [113].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Algorithms in the Daily Lives of Child-Welfare Caseworkers: Harms to Practice, Agency, and Street-Level Decision-Making

Saxena

Lee

2022

SSRN Journal

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Algorithms in the Daily Lives of Child-Welfare Caseworkers: Harms to Practice, Agency, and Street-Level Decision-Making

Saxena

Lee

2022

SSRN Journal

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Algorithmic Harms in Child Welfare: Uncertainties in Practice, Organization, and Street-level Decision-making

Saxena,

Guha

2024

ACM J. Responsib. Comput.

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Algorithms in public services such as child welfare, criminal justice, and education are increasingly being used to make high-stakes decisions about human lives. Drawing upon findings from a two-year ethnography conducted at a child welfare agency, we highlight how algorithmic systems are embedded within a complex decision-making ecosystem at critical points of the child welfare process. Caseworkers interact with algorithms in their daily lives where they must collect information about families and feed it to algorithms to make critical decisions. We show how the interplay between systemic mechanics and algorithmic decision-making can adversely impact the fairness of the decision-making process itself. We show how functionality issues in algorithmic systems can lead to process-oriented harms where they adversely affect the nature of professional practice, and administration at the agency, and lead to inconsistent and unreliable decisions at the street level. In addition, caseworkers are compelled to undertake additional labor in the form of repair work to restore disrupted administrative processes and decision-making, all while facing organizational pressures and time and resource constraints. Finally, we share the case study of a simple algorithmic tool that centers caseworkers’ decision-making within a trauma-informed framework and leads to better outcomes, however, required a significant amount of investments on the agency’s part in creating the ecosystem for its proper use.

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An examination of recent federal and philanthropic funding for child welfare research in the United States

Cited by 2 publications

References 17 publications

Algorithms in the Daily Lives of Child-Welfare Caseworkers: Harms to Practice, Agency, and Street-Level Decision-Making

Algorithms in the Daily Lives of Child-Welfare Caseworkers: Harms to Practice, Agency, and Street-Level Decision-Making

Algorithmic Harms in Child Welfare: Uncertainties in Practice, Organization, and Street-level Decision-making

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An examination of recent federal and philanthropic funding for child welfare research in the United States

Cited by 2 publications

References 17 publications

Algorithms in the Daily Lives of Child-Welfare Caseworkers:&nbsp;Harms to Practice, Agency, and&nbsp;Street-Level Decision-Making

Algorithms in the Daily Lives of Child-Welfare Caseworkers:&nbsp;Harms to Practice, Agency, and&nbsp;Street-Level Decision-Making

Algorithmic Harms in Child Welfare: Uncertainties in Practice, Organization, and Street-level Decision-making

Contact Info

Product

Resources

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Algorithms in the Daily Lives of Child-Welfare Caseworkers: Harms to Practice, Agency, and Street-Level Decision-Making

Algorithms in the Daily Lives of Child-Welfare Caseworkers: Harms to Practice, Agency, and Street-Level Decision-Making