As part of a yearlong investigation, The Associated Press obtained the data points underpinning several algorithms deployed by child welfare agencies to understand how they predict which children could be at risk of harm.
PITTSBURGH — For the two weeks that the Hackneys' baby girl lay in a Pittsburgh hospital bed weak from dehydration, her parents rarely left her side, sometimes sleeping on the fold-out sofa in the room.
"They had custody papers and they took her right there and then," Lauren Hackney recalled."And we started crying." Lauren Hackney has attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder that affects her memory, and her husband, Andrew, has a comprehension disorder and nerve damage from a stroke suffered in his 20s. Their baby girl was 7 months old when she began refusing her bottles. Facing a nationwide shortage of formula, they traveled from Pennsylvania to West Virginia looking for some and were forced to change brands. The baby didn't seem to like it.
Over the past six years, Allegheny County has served as a real-world laboratory for testing AI-driven child welfare tools that crunch reams of data about local families to try to predict which children are likely to face danger in their homes. Today, child welfare agencies in at least 26 states and Washington, D.C., have considered using algorithmic tools, and jurisdictions in at least 11 have deployed them, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
Listen now and subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | RSS Feed | Omny Studio What they measure matters. A recent analysis by ACLU researchers found that when Allegheny's algorithm flagged people who accessed county services for mental health and other behavioral health programs, that could add up to three points to a child's risk score, a significant increase on a scale of 20.
The developers have started new projects with child welfare agencies in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, and Arapahoe County, Colorado. The states of California and Pennsylvania, as well as New Zealand and Chile, also asked them to do preliminary work.
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