In 2014, the Minister for Social Development commissioned a project relating to the use of statistical risk modelling within Child, Youth and Family (CYF) intake decision-making. The project was designed to understand whether the use of this information could enhance intake decision-making, where a concern has been raised regarding a child or young person, and a recommendation for a service response must be made. Potential benefits of this project include both a reduction in the number of unnecessary investigations undertaken by CYF, and better identification of those children, young people, and whānau who are a high priority for services. The resulting Enhancing Intake Decision-Making Project was the product of collaboration between Insights MSD, CYF, and the CYF National Contact Centre.

This project was designed to determine whether statistical risk model information can support the intake decision-making process
Internationally, a range of aids have been developed, both within the care and protection field and others, which have the potential to improve the effectiveness of decision-making. These tools include statistical risk models developed from administrative data2, which may be used to improve decision-making, effectively target services, and form part of a strategy to achieve better outcomes for children and young people. This project was designed to assess whether a statistical risk model tool could be used to support intake decision-making within a New Zealand context. The project aimed to explore whether decision-making could be improved by the use of statistical information highlighting the level of underlying risk experienced by those children and young people notified to CYF with a care and protection concern.
To achieve the overall objective of the project, three phases of work were undertaken
The overall objective of the Enhancing Intake Decision-Making Project was to answer the specific question: Could care and protection intake decision-making be improved by giving social workers access to a statistical risk tool? To achieve this overall objective, three main phases of work were undertaken:
1. Developing a statistical risk model specifically tailored to the New Zealand care and protection intake system.
2. Developing a means of putting this statistical risk model into operation within an intake decision-making environment.
3. Trialling the use of this information within a non-operational context at the National Contact Centre, and collecting feedback from social workers relating to their perceptions of this tool. (From the Executive summary). This report was released under the Official Information Act in October 2017,along with Overview and Next Steps for Enhancing Intake Decision-Making Project written 31 October 2016 (follow link). A letter to the OIA applicant (17/10/2017) and an Aide Memoire about the application, written to Minister Anne Tolley on 1 October 2017 were also released and can be found on Oranga Tamariki' OIA response web page - see October 2017 (follow link). Record #5659