Structured Decision Making
Structured Decision Making (SDM) is a child-welfare case-management system that brings consistency to the most consequential decisions in a case — whether to investigate, whether a child is safe, how high the risk of future maltreatment is, what the family needs, and whether to close — by applying a standardized, research-based assessment tool at each of these decision points. Developed by the Children's Research Center (now Evident Change) around the actuarial-risk work of Christopher Baird, Dennis Wagner, and colleagues, SDM aims to reduce the wide variability and bias of unaided judgment and to target resources where they matter most.
Source record
Citations copied verbatim from the method’s source record. No claim-level verification is inferred from them.
- Baird, C., Wagner, D., Healy, T., & Johnson, K. (1999). Risk assessment in child protective services: Consensus and actuarial model reliability. Child Welfare, 78(6), 723–748. · URL
- Baird, C., & Wagner, D. (2000). The relative validity of actuarial- and consensus-based risk assessment systems. Children and Youth Services Review, 22(11–12), 839–871. · DOI 10.1016/S0190-7409(00)00122-5
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