Research Problem Statement During the past year child protection workers were receiving many more reports of possible child abuse by local professionals than in previous years. A very large percentage of the cases were never opened for services because the worker assigned to investigate had determined that they were unfounded. Form the agency perspective, there was a problem of inefficient use of worker's time. They were spending much of their day dealing with reports where no abuse had taken place, while not having enough time to devote to those cases where abuse was probable. The problem was too many unfounded cases