Inspired by online dating, AI tool for adoption matchmaking falls short for vulnerable foster kids

Some are orphans, others seized from their parents. Many are older and have overwhelming needs or disabilities. Most bear the scars of trauma from being hauled between foster homes, torn from siblings or sexually and physically abused.

Child protective services agencies have wrestled for decades with how to find lasting homes for such vulnerable children and teens –- a challenge so enormous that social workers can never guarantee a perfect fit.

Into this morass stepped Thea Ramirez with what she touted as a technological solution – an artificial intelligence-powered tool that ultimately can predict which adoptive families will stay together. Ramirez claimed this algorithm, designed by former researchers at an online dating service, could boost successful adoptions across the U.S. and promote efficiency at cash-strapped child welfare agencies.

“We’re using science – not merely preferences – to establish a score capable of predicting long-term success,” Ramirez said in an April 2021 YouTube video about her ambitions to flip “the script on the way America matches children and families” using the Family-Match algorithm.

An Associated Press investigation, however, found that the AI tool – among the few adoption algorithms on the market – has produced limited results in the states where it has been used, according to Family-Match’s self-reported data that AP obtained through public records requests from state and local agencies.

Ramirez also has overstated the capabilities of the proprietary algorithm to government officials as she has sought to expand its reach, even as social workers told AP that the tool wasn’t useful and often led them to unwilling families.

Virginia and Georgia dropped the algorithm after trial runs, noting its inability to produce adoptions, though both states have resumed business with Ramirez’s nonprofit called Adoption-Share, according to AP’s review of hundreds of pages of documents.

Tennessee scrapped the program before rolling it out, saying it didn’t work with their internal system even after state officials spent more than two years trying to set it up, and social workers reported mixed experiences with Family-Match in Florida, where its use has been expanding.

State officials told AP that the organization that Ramirez runs as CEO owns some of the sensitive data Family-Match collects. They also noted that the nonprofit provided little transparency about how the algorithm works.

Those experiences, the AP found, provide lessons for social service agencies seeking to deploy predictive analytics without a full grasp of the technologies’ limitations, especially when trying to address such enduring human challenges as finding homes for children described by judges as the “least adoptable.”

“There’s never going to be a foolproof way for us to be able to predict human behavior,” said Bonni Goodwin, a University of Oklahoma child welfare data expert. “There’s nothing more unpredictable than adolescence.”

Ramirez, of Brunswick, Georgia, where her nonprofit is also based, refused to provide details about the algorithm’s inner workings and declined interview requests. By email, she said the tool was a starting point for social workers and did not determine whether a child would be adopted. She also disputed child welfare leaders’ accounts of Family-Match’s performance.

“User satisfaction surveys and check-ins with our agency end users indicate that Family-Match is a valuable tool and helpful to users actively using it to support their recruitment + matching efforts,” Ramirez wrote.

INSPIRED BY ONLINE DATING

Ramirez, a former social worker and wife of a Georgia pastor, has long sought to promote adoption as a way to reduce abortions, according to her public statements, newsletters and a blog post.

Source: AP