Modeling crisis decision-making for children in state custody

We studied 1492 children in state custody over a 6-month period to investigate the relationship between children's hospital admissions and the crisis workers' clinical assessment. A 27-item standardized decision-support tool [the Childhood Severity of Psychiatric Illness (CSPI)] was used to evaluate the symptoms, risk factors, functioning, comorbidity, and system characteristics. The CSPI has been shown to have a reliability range from 0.70 to 0.80 using intraclass correlations. Logistic regression was used to calculate age-adjusted odds ratios (AOR) of hospitalization, their 95% confidence intervals, and corresponding P values. The results showed that risk factors, symptoms, functioning, comorbidities, and system characteristics were all associated with hospital admissions. Children with a recent suicide attempt, severe danger to others, or history of running away from home/treatment settings were more likely to be hospitalized (respective AOR=12.7, P