La valutazione del rischio in situazioni di disagio familiare: il Protocollo sui fattori di rischio e sui fattori di protezione

he principal function of Child Protective Services is to protect children from prospective harm episodes and identifying risk of maltreatment is certainly of paramount import. The primary objective of risk assessment is to identify, from cases referred to child welfare authorities, the subgroup of children at high risk of future abuse or neglect so that action may be taken to pre-vent it. To improve the consistency and effectiveness of CPS investigation and case planning for families involved in the child protection system, the aim of this study is to improve the Protocol of risk and protective factors (Di Blasio, 1997, 2005), a risk assessment instrument for familial maladjustment. Social records of 400 families, referred to social services for child abuse and/or maltreatment and/or neglect, and intervention carried out (child out-of-home placement or monitoring and parental abilities support) are analyzed. Results show that Protocol’s risk and protective factors are able to discriminate between families at high vs. low risk, and especially distal factors are good risk predictive.