Child protection workers are under pressure in NZ. Can predictive modelling help?

By Dylan A Mordaunt, Research Fellow, Faculty of Education, Health, and Psychological Sciences, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington; Flinders University; The University of Melbourne

Across child protection services, frontline staff are often making decisions in the hardest possible conditions: under time pressure, with incomplete information and high stakes on every side.

Get it wrong and the consequences are serious. A child may remain in danger. Or a family may be disrupted unnecessarily, with harms of its own.

There is also a triage problem. Some families need urgent intervention. Some need support. Some need monitoring. And some need less intrusion, not more.

In practice, those judgements already rely on reading signals from fragmented…

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