To sum up: the AFST has inherent design flaws that limit its accuracy. It predicts referrals to the child abuse and neglect hotline and removal of children from their families—hypothetical proxies for child harm—not actual child maltreatment. The data set it utilizes contains only information about families who access public services, so it may be missing key factors that influence abuse and neglect. Finally, its accuracy is only average. It is guaranteed to produce thousands of false negatives and positives annually.
