The document discusses the Allegheny County Family Screening Tool (AFST) which uses proxy variables like the frequency of calls made to child abuse hotlines and foster care placements to determine risk of child abuse. It collects over a billion records from public agencies on things like welfare programs, juvenile justice interactions, and the child welfare office. There is a concern that by collecting so much overlapping data from these sources, which tend to overrepresent and sample the poor, the AFST biases the data in a way that supports targeting and disproportionately flags low-income and black/biracial families for intervention.

1. INST 201 WEEK 9
INTERSECTIONAL DISCUSSION

2. DATA AGGREGATES
CASE STUDY: THE
ALLEGHENY COUNTY
FAMILY SCREENING
TOOL (AFST)

3. AFST USES PROXY VARIABLES TO
DETERMINE CHILD ABUSE/
MALTREATMENT
COMMUNITY REFERAL
– frequency of calls to
hotline on same child
w/in two years
FOSTER PLACEMENT –
frequency a child has
been removed from
home

4. DATA SOURCES
• OVER ONE BILLION RECORDS FROM:
• public agencies and programs including child welfare agencies;
Head Start; housing authorities; and the county jail
• means-tested welfare programs like TANF, SSI, SNAP, and
county medical assistance
• interactions with the juvenile justice system and the CYF office

5. “OVERSAMPLING THE POOR”
SAMPLING: Collecting data from a ‘representative’ group within a
specific population.
OVERSAMPLING: Collecting myriad data points that may actually
overlap from a representative group, and possibly overrepresenting
that group.

6. BIAS IN =
BIAS OUT
• IN: Mandated reporters and other
community members call the child abuse
hotline about Black and biracial families 3.5x
more often than they call about white
families.
• IN: By collecting call and referral data, the
AFST is collecting data at the most racially
biased and disproportionate point
• OUT: ‘DATA’ supports targeting low-income
families, and Black/ bi-racial families.