What happened
Allegheny County's Department of Human Services began giving hotline call screeners the Allegheny Family Screening Tool in 2016. The tool is a predictive risk model that scores each referral from county data on the people involved. Jeremy Goldhaber-Fiebert and Lea Prince of Stanford University evaluated it in a report dated 20 March 2019, which the county published. They compared about 31,000 children in general protective service referrals before the tool with about 34,000 after full implementation in December 2016. They used interrupted time series and regression analyses because randomization was not feasible. They found that the tool and associated policies increased accuracy for children screened in for investigation. Accuracy may have slightly decreased for children screened out. Roughly 24 more children each month were screened in accurately, and the early gain faded somewhat over time. Gains were largest for white children and children under four. Changes to field screening and to screeners' roles came at the same time, so the evaluators could not credit the effect to the tool alone.
Sources
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Evaluation report, by an evaluator that the makers or users commissioned.
Goldhaber-Fiebert JD, Prince L. Impact Evaluation of a Predictive Risk Modeling Tool for Allegheny County's Child Welfare Office. Stanford University, 20 March 2019. Published by the Allegheny County Department of Human Services.
Overall, our analyses showed that the AFST and associated policies increased accuracy for children screened-in for investigation and may have slightly decreased accuracy for children screened-out.
Details
AI system
- Workflow
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Call screeners saw the score, or a mandatory screen-in flag, for every general protective service referral. Screeners made recommendations to supervisors, who made the final decision.
Follow-up
- Conditions for replication
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County data on the people in each referral are available when the referral arrives. Investigative capacity grows if more children are screened in.
Entry details
- Sector
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Child welfare.
- Purpose
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Developers working for Allegheny County's Department of Human Services built the Allegheny Family Screening Tool to help call screeners decide which child welfare referrals to investigate.
Not yet checked: model, release, provider, role, configuration, inputs and outputs, autonomy, human oversight, AI contribution, beneficiaries, reach, distribution and access, duration, every measurement question, every money question, ownership and control, dependencies, cross-border connections, geopolitical implications, replication attempts, availability, institutional decision, grounds, action and result, success criterion, every evidence question, observed or intended, alternative assessments, related entries, other identifiers, category mappings.
Cite this record
Peter H. Vartanian. (2026). Allegheny Family Screening Tool makes screen-in calls more accurate (AIBD-0727). Artificial Intelligence Benefits Database, edition of 31 October 2026. https://petervartanian.xyz/aibd/records/AIBD-0727.html (archived at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/AADSII, version 4.0)