Re: Query: Intake Alternatives for Child Protective?

[MCBlueline@xxxxxxx]

Material on this topic continues to come to me off-list.  All of it is quite
good.  The outlines of what I'm getting are as follows:

1. Intake prioritizing that diverts/refers low-risk cases has the potential
to miss developing patterns of neglect.  

2. Registers ought to be dynamic information systems in which intake
knowledge developed locally feeds back to augment, reshape, and clarify the
central policy of senior management. (In theory, it seems to me, such systems
should "learn" and "homogenize" at higher and higher levels of
acuity/performance.)  Also, central registers can and should communicate with
one along similar lines.   

3. Some variation by community in what constitutes neglect may be inevitable
and not necessarily a bad thing.   

What I'm starting to hear in these responses and in prior ones is a
description of an integrated protective-preventive system that recognizes
community differences ("intake" in the broadest sense) and learns from its
own experience.  

To return to research issues: is such a system possible -- one that is fair,
acute, effective, respectful of rights and privacy?  Has any work been done
on how to design and implement such a system?  (we've moved away from intake
narrowly defined, but system entry remains, I think, a key issue.)

There's a tie-in here with Eli H. Newberger's observation that an unbalanced
system promotes "helping hands that strike again."  [See his "The Helping
Hand Strikes Again: Unintended Consequences of Child Abuse Reporting."  In
Newberger, Eli H., and Richard Bourne, eds., _Unhappy Families_.  Littleton,
Mass: PSG Publishing, 1985.] 

Regards,
Michael Cahill, Ph.D.
Cultural Anthropologist
623 Snyders Corner Road
Poestenkill, NY  12140
(518) 283-5898
mcblueline@aol.com