Purpose: While numerous and multifaceted instruments are available to child welfare clinicians and researchers, there is still lack of concise and empirically based measures that child welfare workers can use in field settings. The current study is based on a metropolitan child welfare program evaluation, where reports indicated that there are significant discrepancies between the caregivers and service providers' perceptions of families' service needs. This paper addresses these discrepancies, offers analyses of measurement instruments used for identifying parents' needs, and proposes shorter versions of assessment scales that are user-friendly in everyday child welfare practice.

Method: The data was derived from interviews with 244 social workers and 605 parents participating in family preservation and foster care programs. Measures with established validity and reliability (E.G., Child Well-Being Scales, Everyday Stressors Index, Composite International Diagnostic Interview) were reduced to shorter forms while controlling for psychometric properties, sensitivity and specificity. These reduced scales were then juxtaposed against program outcomes (child placement to foster care and reunification with family) to assess their usefulness in predicting the outcomes.

Results: 3-6 item short forms, appropriate for field practice, were developed to assess mental health, deprivation, stress and parental qualities. With inevitable compromises between the representativeness and reliability of the instruments, most of the scales had good discriminative ability regarding the outcomes (foster care and reunification), and possessed satisfactory psychometric properties.

Significance for social work: The evidence-based predictive nature of short assessment forms offers valuable tools for child welfare front-line workers, and provides an empirical basis for practice decisions. First, they can help child welfare workers to recognize families' needs in areas where they are otherwise likely to miss the problems. Second, the criterion-related validity helps to identify parents who are most at risk for child placement or, correspondingly, more fit for reunification.