5th Floor
In 2014, the Department of Human Services, with support from the Richard King Mellon Foundation, solicited proposals to explore how we can improve decision making using predictive analytics. Allegheny County chose a team from Aukland University of Technology led by Rhema Vaithianathan but also including other strong partners in child abuse research (Emily Putnam-Hornstein, USC), statistical modeling, ethics, and evaluation.
Join GWP for lunch* as we are provided an overview of predictive risk modeling and discuss how this modeling can be used to improve child welfare decision making (once the child welfare system is involved) and how the community might harness this information to assist families prior to involvement in the child welfare system. Critical ethical, disparities, and implementation issues will also be discussed.
Speakers:
- Marc Cherna, Director, Allegheny County Department of Human Services
- Erin Dalton, Deputy Director, Allegheny County Department of Human Services
- Emily Putnam-Hornstein, Assistant Professor at USC’s School of Social Work and Director of the Children’s Data Network
- Rhema Vaithianathan, Professor of Economics, Auckland University of Technology and Senior Research Fellow, Singapore Management University