Policy & Practice | Fall 2024

born from mothers who were under the age of 15 at the time of delivery. This is challenging data to look upon. The age of consent for sex in most states in 16. The literature con cludes that, for girls who are pregnant before they turn 16, the odds are overwhelming that they have been victimized. And even if the context of the pregnancy did not align with these facts, a girl parenting at that age is going to have a really hard time keeping her life together. When I saw the data, I was, quite frankly, elated because I knew it meant we could help. The path to healing was so clear. We just needed the hospitals to notify child welfare any time a girl under the age of 16 arrived in labor and delivery. It would trigger an enriched family preserva tion set of activities that might support this young mom’s ability to keep her life on track while she was parenting her newborn. It was the doorway to prevention we’d all been looking for. Unfortunately, the hospital admin istrators refused. They offered misinterpretations of privacy laws

and walked away from every girl who would parent in town for years to come. I was incredulous, and I still am today. I think these notions of privacy— and invoking “big brother” when we start to talk about sharing data—are an antiquated way of thinking about data that is hurting our ability to help families thrive. Making knowable information known is the doorway to prevention at a scale that will alter child welfare and support families in a myriad of ways. For instance, through data sources, it’s knowable that young girls get pregnant, or that five-year olds miss most days of school, or that children with asthma don’t get their prescriptions filled, or that eight-year olds get arrested, or that a family with children is evicted, and on and on. Each of these life events shows evidence of early signs of distress in families and each has associated solu tions that we know will work. We can help a girl who gets pregnant by wrapping her with supports for her new family. We can help a family get their kindergartener on a trajectory for school attendance over the course of

their academic career. We can close the gap on the regular use of life-saving medications for children with sub specialty needs. We can house a family who is homeless, and we can divert a young child from a life of crime. We can only do it if we decide to make the knowable, known . If the presence of these kinds of challenges is knowable and if the solutions to them are available, how can we justify turning away from the opportunity to know them? We could leverage GenAI to turn the lights on and reveal opportuni ties, early and often, to care for and support our neighbors. I feel an urgency to be about the business of doing so responsibly.

Molly Tierney is a Managing Director and Child Welfare Lead at Accenture.

Reference Notes 1. https://aphsa.org/APHSABlog/

APHSABlog/Posts%20By%20Year/2024/ the-potential-of-gen-ai-in-child-welfare.aspx 2. https://www.merriam-webster.com/ dictionary/privacy

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Fall 2024 Policy & Practice 31