The racial and ethnic disproportionality and disparity in the child protective system (CPS) has been a concern for decades. Structural factors strongly influence engagement with the child welfare system and families experiencing poverty or financial hardship are at a heightened risk. The economic factors influencing child welfare involvement are further complicated by structural racism which has resulted in a greater prevalence of poverty and financial hardship for families who are Black, Native American or Alaska Native (Indigenous), or and Latino/Hispanic (Latino) and their communities. The multiple decision points within CPS are an opportunity to reify or correct for bias in child welfare outcomes. One major effort to eliminate racial disparities and disproportionalities has been to enact standardized decision-making procedures that aim to control for implicit or explicit bias in CPS. The Structured Decision-Making Model’s (SDM) actuarial-based risk assessment (RA) is the gold-standard of these efforts. In this conceptual article, we ask (1) How are structural factors accounted for in assessment of risk within CPS? and (2) What are the consequences when structural factors are left out of risk assessments procedures? We posit that the exclusion of race, ethnicity, and economic factors from the RA has inflated the importance of variables that become proxies for these factors, resulting in inaccurate assessments of risk. The construction of this tool reflects how structural racism has been overlooked as an important cause of disproportionality in CPS, with interventions then focused on individual workers and cases, rather than the system at large. We suggest a new framework for thinking about risk, the structural risk perspective, and call for a revisioning of assessment of risk within child welfare that acknowledges the social determinants of CPS involvement.

几十年来，儿童保护制度（CPS）中的种族和民族不成比例和差异一直是一个令人担忧的问题。结构性因素强烈影响儿童福利体系的参与，经历贫困或经济困难的家庭面临更高的风险。结构性种族主义使影响儿童福利参与的经济因素变得更加复杂，结构性种族主义导致黑人、美洲原住民或阿拉斯加原住民（土著）或拉丁裔/西班牙裔（拉丁裔）及其他们的家庭更加普遍地陷入贫困和经济困难。社区。 CPS 中的多个决策点是具体化或纠正儿童福利结果偏差的机会。消除种族差异和不成比例的一项主要努力是制定标准化决策程序，旨在控制 CPS 中隐性或显性的偏见。结构化决策模型 (SDM) 基于精算的风险评估 (RA) 是这些工作的黄金标准。在这篇概念性文章中，我们提出以下问题：(1) 在 CPS 风险评估中如何考虑结构性因素？ (2) 如果结构性因素被排除在风险评估程序之外，会产生什么后果？我们认为，从 RA 中排除种族、民族和经济因素夸大了成为这些因素代理变量的重要性，导致风险评估不准确。该工具的构建反映了结构性种族主义如何被忽视，因为结构性种族主义是 CPS 中不成比例的一个重要原因，而干预措施则侧重于个体工人和案例，而不是整个系统。 我们提出了一个思考风险的新框架，即结构风险视角，并呼吁修订儿童福利风险评估，承认 CPS 参与的社会决定因素。