Child Safety Assessment

Child safety assessment is the structured process child protective services uses to decide whether a child faces immediate, serious danger and, if so, what must be done right now to protect them. Unlike risk assessment, which estimates the probability of future maltreatment, safety assessment focuses on the present: it identifies active safety threats, weighs them against the child's vulnerability and the caregivers' capacity to protect, and reaches a safe-or-unsafe determination that, when unsafe, triggers an immediate safety plan up to and including removal.