Can Social Workers Estimate the Likelihood of Future Actions and Events? A Forecasting Accuracy Study

Abstract Social workers routinely make decisions and formulate care plans in the course of their work with children and families. These decisions and care plans are based at least in part on the professional judgement of the worker. An important component of judgemental quality is the extent to which explicit or implicit forecasts about the likelihood of different future actions and events are made with accuracy. In this article, we report an analysis of 21,193 forecasts made by 581 child and family social workers in England about the likelihood of different future actions and events following referrals to children’s services. We found that the more likely social workers said an action or event was to happen (as the forecast likelihood increased towards 100 per cent), the more often it occurred. However, we also found that social workers tend to over-estimate the likelihood of almost all specified future actions and events. Social workers were most accurate when forecasting something to be very unlikely, and less accurate when they forecast something to be likely or very likely. We consider these findings in relation to false positive and negative errors in child protection, and the theory of judgemental rationalism.