Implementing child mistreatment risk assessment systems: lessons from theory

Over the past ten years, public child protective services (CPS) agencies have adopted risk assessment systems in an effort to improve the quality of service delivery to children and their families. Various reviews of the impact of these models suggest that they have not lived up to their expectations and have had little or no impact on broad system indicators of service delivery. Foremost among the findings of existing studies is that these models have not been implemented and used as intended. The risk assessment field has not taken advantage of theoretical principles suggested by the organizational change literature. The researcher applies Lewin's Force Field Analysis to identify the forces for and against effective implementation of risk assessment systems in public agencies. The author suggests that lessons from theory could improve the effectiveness of the implementation of change in CPS agencies.