"LK" wrote in message
...
On Feb 11, 2:04 pm, Greegor wrote:
On Feb 11, 11:34 am, LK wrote:

On Feb 11, 11:03 am, "dragonsgirl" wrote:

"LK" wrote in message

...
On Feb 11, 12:59 am, "dragonsgirl" wrote:

"Greegor" wrote in message

...

DCF is now searching through personnel records of its 13,500
employees,
looking for any red flags. But that needed to happen in November
2006,
when a policy change required that all new employees go through
background screening.

The agency is considered the front line of defense for children
who are
victims of dysfunctional chaos. Displacement is traumatic enough
without
having to fear someone in the system.

DCF is on the right track, making sure it weeds out potentially
dangerous employees. And it's a clear message to other
governmental
agencies that deal with children that background checks are
necessary
for all employees.

From the agency viewpoint isn't it good Public Relations
for them to root out their own perverts?

If they find some raging perverts inside their agency
will they announce it publicly? I doubt it.

So they can do their own version of "keep it in the family"
with all of the pervs they find internally, right?

How are they going to test hard enough to
find the perves within their agency?

If some slip through won't it prove that they
don't know their head from their heiney?

If they can't even accurately screen
their own people, how do they pretend
any credibility screening parents?

They don't screen parents.

Maybe they don't call it that.

They take parent's behaviors into account when determining their
ability
to
parent.

And everything else they can find.

***Such as?

Haven't you ever seen one of their initial assessment forms? There
is a whole list of generalized questions on that alone, I'm sure they
differ slightly from state to state, but you can't tell me that the
only thing that they factor in is the behavors of the parents.
Condition of the house, interviews with the children or professional
care providers, etc.

LK, Are you talking about the Risk Assessment "instrument"?


The one that the "Product Acquisition Team" comes to the door with.

They have a document by that title that
caseworkers would see as an insult to their
intelligence IF only they were smart enough
to realize it is.


Well they can't afford to have any independant thought going on in
there, can they?

In the ascps newsgroup in the past, these
"idiot sheets" have been discussed.

They were created supposedly to make
the decisions objective and non-biased.

One outfit that created a set of these forms
was called "Structured Decision Making".
I was greatly amused that on their web site
they warned that their forms were NOT to
be used for decision making.

Imagine an outfit with that name having
to disclaim that their form is not for
making decisions.

It's a bit like actuarial tables but used to decide risk.

Single mother?
Under 30 years old?
Two or more kids?
Lives in the country?
Owns a hunting rifle (locked in gun safe)?
Butcher any farm animals?

In an example a woman has the first four
against her so she is considered guilty
before CPS even arrives at her door.

The "risk assessment" instrument is
supposed to be used after a family is
founded and set up for services to decide
what services are appropriate.

The "instrument" is only supposed to be
used by people who are thoroughly trained
to use it.

The problems:
These are often are brought out at the very
beginning of a "case" and used to decide
whether to "found" somebody.

Many people using them have not had the training.

Even if a set of these "idiot sheets" is used
only after a founded and to decide "services"
then they are assigning "services" based
on risk factors (actuarial tables) rather than
actual facts IN THAT CASE.

This would NOT be a legally acceptable
basis for assigning a "service".

The "serv ices" are not supposed to be assigned
but agreed to through a meeting of minds with
the family, first of all.


Since when has what the family thought mattered?

Secondly, an "actuarial table" rationale does
not seriously qualify as a material BASIS for a service.

But my personal favorite gripe is that the
"instrument" is supposed to be scientific,
impartial and objective, but throughout the
"instrument" there are places deliberately
intended to "fudge" the numbers.

If a caseworker is inclined for or against
somebody they have many places actually
arranged specifically to "fudge" the
numbers either for or against the "suspect family".

So the pretense of impartiality and objectivity
is just a load of BS.

By the way, the "SDM Structured Decision Making"
website disclaiming that their forms are NOT to be
used for DECISION MAKING was quickly changed.

SDM was a consortium of several states but later
incarnations of the "idiot sheet" forms appear
to be plagiarized BY those states. I doubt that
the ""expert material"" is something that can
actually even be copyrighted.

It's a generalized form. There are no check boxes, lots of open types
of questions.

****That is not true.
At least, not on the form I have seen, and I believe I provided that form
some time back, maybe two years ago, for viewing with personal information
of the subjects (no, not me) blacked out.
It was a grid type form, each column had a heading...can't recall exactly
what they said, but something like 'Physical appearance', and other types of
generalizations.
Under those were descriptors in boxes, and the worker was apparently to
check mark the descriptor that best described the conditions that applied.
For instance (because I'm not making myself clear, I don't think), under the
heading 'Environment', for example, there would be several boxes that said
things like (box 1) "Homeless", (box 2) Living with friends or family, (box
3) "Inadequate housing' and that box would go on to name what constituted
such...no heat, no utilities, over crowding, etc. in each case.
I can't recall what the risk ratings were, but for each category there was a
no risk, low risk, moderate risk, and high risk box.
The end of the assessment asked for the number of moderate to high risk
check marks, and then gave a determination as to the over all risk based on
that.