ABSTRACT
This paper focuses on understanding the collaborative work of multi-disciplinary teams in the child welfare system (CWS). CWS workers participate in meetings mediated by policies in place, current child-welfare practice, as well as algorithms that offer recommendations. We conducted 25 observations of these meetings to assess how algorithms aid decision-making in a domain where decisions often come down to the policies and practices in place. Our findings suggest that the algorithm works fairly well at recommending placement settings, however, these recommendations are often overridden because of policy or legal requirements. Moreover, re-appropriation of the placement algorithm to prescribe the rates for foster parents has led to unintended consequences. This poster identifies uses cases of the algorithm in place, scenarios where conflicts arise between the algorithm and policy/practice, as well as how these conflicts are addressed. Our work identifies a need for human-centered algorithms that can better support child welfare practice.
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Index Terms
- Child Welfare System: Interaction of Policy, Practice and Algorithms
Recommendations
A Human-Centered Review of Algorithms used within the U.S. Child Welfare System
CHI '20: Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsThe U.S. Child Welfare System (CWS) is charged with improving outcomes for foster youth; yet, they are overburdened and underfunded. To overcome this limitation, several states have turned towards algorithmic decision-making systems to reduce costs and ...
Algorithmic Harms in Child Welfare: Uncertainties in Practice, Organization, and Street-level Decision-making
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 ...
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