Re: Risk assessment/case classification

["Anna K. Hagemeister" <ahagemei@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In research we are doing at the University of Minnesota's School of 
Social Work and Minnesota Center Against Violence and Abuse we have 
been working on similar issues.  I the same vein as below, we have
begin to consider the use of similar categories in Minnesota that 
come under neglect classifications such as "failure to protect," "exposure 
to threatening or dangerous conditions," and "disregard for safety." 
We have heard and conjectured that these may be ways to bring 
children/families into child protection where risk may actually 
result from domestic violence going on in the household by a 
perpetrator who is not the child's father or their mother's husband.

Thus, there may be many "hidden" cases of both risk and injury 
resulting from domestic violence and sexual abuse that are not really 
"neglect" per se.  But more an artifact of how the cases come into 
the system, the fact that women are the ones with custody and thus 
there is more "leverage" to work with them to do something to 
"protect their children."

Annelies Hagemeister, MA (Project Research Assistant)


> Date:          Mon, 10 May 1999 12:10:23 -0500
> Reply-to:      CHILD-MALTREATMENT-RESEARCH-L@cornell.edu
> From:          "Judy M. Laurendine" <msju@email.msn.com>
> To:            Child Maltreatment Researchers <CHILD-MALTREATMENT-RESEARCH-L@cornell.edu>
> Subject:       Re: Risk assessment/case classification
> X-To:          <CHILD-MALTREATMENT-RESEARCH-L@cornell.edu>

> Re:  Roy Wilson's email about Fuzzy Logic for Classification of Child
> Maltreatment Cases.  In doing some research on sexual abuse I attempted to
> get information from a regional child protection agency and found that they
> do not identify sexual abuse as such when the mother is non-offending.  They
> list this as lack of supervision so it is impossible to know how many sexual
> abuse cases the area handles and how much of that number measures actual
> lack of supervision cases.  Have others found this problem?  The area I'm
> working in is outside of New Orleans, La.  In addition they do not code the
> basic problem in the family that causes them to come to the agency's
> attention except for substance abuse.  They do not, for example, list
> parental conditions that affect child care such as parental mental illness,
> health or disability problems, ect.--Judy Laurendine
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
***********************************************
Annelies Hagemeister, M.A.
Research Assistant, School of Social Work
Graduate Student, SSW and Family Social Science
University of Minnesota
St. Paul, MN  55108
612-624-8796
hage0044@tc.umn.edu

The whole is greater than 
the sum of its parts.