CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Checklists and formulas don't work in child welfare. Investigating claims of child abuse and neglect is a very-human, complex business where facts are rarely certain and any remedy carries risks.

So to give new caseworkers insight into the complicated situations they will face, before they deal with actual kids and families, researchers at the University of Illinois have developed a Web-based learning environment called CARA (for Child Abuse Risk Assessment).

It provides on-the-job training without the on-the-job risks, says John Poertner, a professor in the UI School of Social Work and director of its Children and Family Research Center, which sponsored the project.

"What it really does is it condenses what a child welfare worker would get from experiencing their first 10 or 12 cases," Poertner said.

CARA is built around 10 real-life, less-than-simple cases, with names changed to protect privacy. Through the program, users can explore each case from any angle and in any order. They can analyze the unique aspects of each, getting a feel for the interaction of personalities, family dynamics and the influence of factors like substance abuse or domestic violence.

Users also can compare similarities between cases -- observing, for instance, how mental illness in one family may threaten a child's safety, and how in another it may not.

What the program doesn't do is lead the user to conclusions, Poertner said. "It doesn't say that in this case, at this point, you should say that this child is in danger and remove them from the home."

CARA was developed by Beena Choksi, a former UI doctoral student in educational psychology. She received her degree last year and has since returned home to India. Aiding in the development was Poertner, along with staff from the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. Nine of the 10 cases, in fact, came from the IDCFS files -- just one benefit from a 5-year-old cooperative agreement between the research center and the department.

Choksi based her work on learning theories developed by former UI education professor Rand Spiro, now at Michigan State University, which suggest better ways to teach complex, unstructured knowledge -- in other words, knowledge that doesn't lend itself to formulas or linear thinking.

Given the theories that underlie CARA, "I think that it's a very significant learning tool," Poertner said. And he sees additional uses for other audiences and other topics in child welfare.

CARA can be found on the Web at http://cfrcwww.social.uiuc.edu/cara, and plans are under way to produce it as a CD-ROM.

---University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Back to The Science of Mental Health