In 2019, the New Hampshire Division for Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) partnered with Evident Change to update their current suite of Structured Decision Making® (SDM) assessments. The goal of this study was to examine how the current risk assessment is performing across three SDM® principles of utility, accuracy, and equity. This risk validation study used a participatory approach, where a steering committee composed of agency leadership, agency supervisors, agency line staff, and staff from community partner agencies engaged in the process in partnership with DCYF and Evident Change. The steering committee was responsible for reviewing the validation analytics, vetting the analytics in relation to local practice, and ensuring that the resultant risk assessment was the most appropriate for use by DCYF staff with New Hampshire families.
