Structured Decision Making (SDM) consists of nine major components or assessments that will be documented in the N-FOCUS System: SDM Household, SDM Safety Assessment, SDM Safety Plan, SDM Initial Risk Assessment, SDM Prevention Assessment, SDM Family Strength and Needs Assessment, SDM Risk Reassessment, SDM Reunification Assessment, and the SDM Assessment of Placement Safety and Suitability. Not all of the assessments or components will be used for each case and depends upon the circumstances of the reported incident.
Structured Decision Making (SDM) is a tool developed by the Children’s Research Center and has been selected by Nebraska’s Children and Family Service Administration to replace the current Safety Model.
Like the current Safety Model supervisory approval is a requirement and one of the key factors. The Supervisory Review process will be required for eight of the SDM Assessments.
The supervisory approval is completed in two stages.
First, when the worker has finished documenting the information in the Assessment, he/she will set the Status to, ‘Ready for Review’. The worker is expected to review the N-FOCUS data before updating the status to ‘Ready for Review’.
Second, either the worker’s direct supervisor or another supervisor, when necessary, will review the completed components. The supervisor will then set the Status to either, ‘Revisions Required’ or ‘Final’.
If the Status is set to ‘Revisions Required’, the worker will be able to edit the component as needed. The worker would then repeat the supervisory review process.
Once a supervisor has set the component Status to Final changes cannot be made to the assessment. For special circumstances select administrators will have the ability to reopen finalized assessments if error correction is needed or additional information needs to be added after the Status has been set to Final.
Since both the worker and the supervisor have to review the component before updating the status to ‘Final’, having to reopen a finalized assessment should not occur frequently if at all.
(03-2012)