Child Welfare and Website

Policy Website Evaluation: Implications for HUS Service Workers With the internet increasingly becoming a common source of information for human service workers, evaluating the credibility of information is crucial. The CRAAP (Currency, Reliability, Accuracy, Authority, and Purpose) method provides a suitable tool for achieving this. In this paper, the tool was applied to three websites relating to child welfare issues: Child Welfare Information Gateway, CWLA, and Childwelfare.com.

While the analysis indicates that CWLA is the best website, all the three websites met the threshold for a good website as the least-scoring website attained a score of 8 points out of a possible 15 points. This evaluation has important implications for human service professionals, especially those dealing with child welfare issues. To avoid misleading the public, human service workers must ascertain that the information they use is credible, reliable, up-to-date, and verifiable.

Policy Website Evaluation: Implications for HUS Service Workers Introduction The internet is a frequent source of information for human service workers. Nonetheless, it is important for human service workers to exercise discretion when using information from the internet. They must thoroughly evaluate internet information to ensure information accuracy and reliability. For human service workers, evaluating internet information is crucial given the nature of their work.

As their work revolves around critical social issues, human service workers cannot afford to rely on inconsistent or unverifiable information (National Organization for Human Services [NHS], n.d.). This is particularly true for human service workers concerned with child welfare. Child welfare workers seek to promote the wellbeing of children, underscoring the need for credible, evidence-based information (Mallon & Hess, 2005). One tool human service workers can use to evaluate internet information is the CRAAP method. CRAAP stands for Currency, Reliability, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose (Qakseclib.weebly.com, n.d.).

The aim of this paper is to evaluate three websites concerned with child welfare issues. Following a brief discussion of the policy area and its relation to the human services field, the CRAAP method is applied to the three websites. Next, a discussion of the findings is presented, clearly highlighting the importance of the findings to human service workers. Policy Area and Relevance to HUS Child welfare is an important element of the broader human services field. Essentially, child welfare initiatives are aimed at enhancing the wellbeing of children.

They seek to address issues such as child poverty, child abuse, child neglect, adoption, and homelessness (Featherstone et al., 2010). For children undergoing these issues, human service professionals come in handy. They work with families, communities, organizations government agencies, donors, and other stakeholders to ensure vulnerable children are protected and assisted. In the U.S., child welfare is a matter of policy priority.

At the federal level, major policies relating to child welfare include the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, the Adoption Opportunities and the Abandoned Infants Assistance Act, the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act, and the Affordable Care Act. In addition to federal policies, individual states have their own child welfare policies. These policies guide human service professionals in their work. For human service workers to effectively fulfil their work, they must have facts and statistics (Mallon & Hess, 2005). This means obtaining information from the right sources.

Website Analysis The CRAAP method is a suitable framework for evaluating the credibility of websites. The element of currency means that human service workers must establish how recent the information they use is. Facts and statistics on child welfare and other social issues keep on changing, hence the need for up-to-date information. The element of reliability means that human service workers must establish how accurate and consistent the information is. Human service workers must also determine the authority, credibility, and repute of the author of any given information.

The author may be an individual or an organisation. With reliable information, human service workers ensure their clients and the public at large are not misled or deceived. The last element of the CRAAP tool is purpose, which means that human service workers must assess how objective and unbiased the information they use is (Qakseclib.weebly.com, n.d.). When using the CRAAP tool, a website is ranked on the five elements on the basis of a pre-determined scale.

In this evaluation, the websites were ranked on a scale of 0-3: with 0 representing the least score on currency, reliability, authority, and purpose; and 3 representing the highest score on currency, reliability, authority, and purpose. The total score is determined by summing up the five scores. The most points a website can score are 15 points and the least is 0 points. The three websites considered for the analysis include Child Welfare Information Gateway, Child Welfare League of America (CWLA), and Childwelfare.com.

Maintained by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Child Information Gateway is an online resource for child welfare professionals. CWLA is an umbrella organisation that brings together public and private organisations serving vulnerable children and families. Childwelfare.com provides an online repository of information for child welfare workers all over the world. The three websites are analysed in the following section.

Child Welfare Information Gateway (https://www.childwelfare.gov/aboutus/) Criteria/Score 0 1 2 3 Currency No indication of the date the site was created or updated Reliability Links to sources of information are provided (e.g. journal articles and HHS) Authority of author Author identified but credentials not provided Authority of organisation Government agency (HHS) Purpose Supports scholarly information. Balanced/unbiased coverage of child welfare issues. Total Score 10 CWLA (http://www.cwla.org/about-us/) Criteria/Score 0 1 2 3 Currency The date is less than 2 years Reliability Links to sources of information are provided (e.g.

journal articles and government reports) Authority of author Credentials are provided and suggest the author is an expert Authority of organisation Domain name is. org Purpose Supports scholarly information. Balanced/unbiased coverage of child welfare issues. Total Score 12 Childwelfare.com (http://www.childwelfare.com/index.htm) Criteria/Score 0 1 2 3 Currency The date the site was created or updated exceeds 3 years Reliability Links to sources of information are provided (e.g. journal articles and government reports) Authority of author Author identified but credentials not provided Authority of organisation Domain name is.

com Purpose Provides factual information, though there appears to be some bias Total Score 8 Ranking The results of the analysis indicate that Child Welfare Information Gateway scored 10 points, CWLA 12 points, and Childwelfare.com 8 points. As per the CRAAP tool, a score of 12-15 points means that a website is an excellent source for research. 8-11 points mean that though a website is a good source for a research paper, other sources must be consulted to verify the information.

4-7 points mean that the site is useful only for casual projects, hence should not be used for a research paper. Finally, 0-3 points mean that the source is questionable. Therefore, the best website out of the three is CWLA. For the other two, it would be prudent to do some verification. Discussion With the internet increasingly becoming the first go-to place for information in today's world, the importance of evaluating information credibility cannot.