FOCES: An experimental expert system to select appropriate foster care homes for children

The FOster Care Expert System (FOCES) was developed to provide advice to social workers of the Roanoke City Department of Social Services who must select foster care homes for children who cannot remain with their own families. It was implemented using the General pUrpose Expert Shell System (GUESS)...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Winett, Sheila G.
Other Authors: Computer Science
Format: Others
Language:en_US
Published: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University 2017
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10919/80055
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spelling ndltd-VTETD-oai-vtechworks.lib.vt.edu-10919-800552020-10-23T06:30:01Z FOCES: An experimental expert system to select appropriate foster care homes for children Winett, Sheila G. Computer Science Fox, Edward A. Brown, Ezra A. Roach, John W. LD5655.V855 1987.W561 Expert systems (Computer science) Artificial intelligence -- Computer programs Foster home care The FOster Care Expert System (FOCES) was developed to provide advice to social workers of the Roanoke City Department of Social Services who must select foster care homes for children who cannot remain with their own families. It was implemented using the General pUrpose Expert Shell System (GUESS) and Horn Clause Prolog. The system's design was greatly influenced by unique features of the problem domain. Among the key concerns were: unresolved questions within the social work profession about foster home selection and evaluation, serious methodological and philosophical difficulties associated with defining a good "person-environment fit", and the volatile, free-form narrative nature of the information maintained by social services agencies about children and homes. "Traditional" approaches to knowledge acquisition and representation adopted by developers of expert systems were of limited use. Adaptation of extended "p-norm" Boolean queries previously used in information retrieval work simplified the knowledge representation and matching tasks for this human services application. Evaluation of FOCES' performance, using a small database of children and homes, has shown that the system can select appropriate foster care placements at least as well as some experienced social workers. Master of Science 2017-11-09T20:41:37Z 2017-11-09T20:41:37Z 1987 Thesis Text http://hdl.handle.net/10919/80055 en_US OCLC# 16359370 In Copyright http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ vi, 73 leaves application/pdf application/pdf Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
collection NDLTD
language en_US
format Others
sources NDLTD
topic LD5655.V855 1987.W561
Expert systems (Computer science)
Artificial intelligence -- Computer programs
Foster home care
spellingShingle LD5655.V855 1987.W561
Expert systems (Computer science)
Artificial intelligence -- Computer programs
Foster home care
Winett, Sheila G.
FOCES: An experimental expert system to select appropriate foster care homes for children
description The FOster Care Expert System (FOCES) was developed to provide advice to social workers of the Roanoke City Department of Social Services who must select foster care homes for children who cannot remain with their own families. It was implemented using the General pUrpose Expert Shell System (GUESS) and Horn Clause Prolog. The system's design was greatly influenced by unique features of the problem domain. Among the key concerns were: unresolved questions within the social work profession about foster home selection and evaluation, serious methodological and philosophical difficulties associated with defining a good "person-environment fit", and the volatile, free-form narrative nature of the information maintained by social services agencies about children and homes. "Traditional" approaches to knowledge acquisition and representation adopted by developers of expert systems were of limited use. Adaptation of extended "p-norm" Boolean queries previously used in information retrieval work simplified the knowledge representation and matching tasks for this human services application. Evaluation of FOCES' performance, using a small database of children and homes, has shown that the system can select appropriate foster care placements at least as well as some experienced social workers. === Master of Science
author2 Computer Science
author_facet Computer Science
Winett, Sheila G.
author Winett, Sheila G.
author_sort Winett, Sheila G.
title FOCES: An experimental expert system to select appropriate foster care homes for children
title_short FOCES: An experimental expert system to select appropriate foster care homes for children
title_full FOCES: An experimental expert system to select appropriate foster care homes for children
title_fullStr FOCES: An experimental expert system to select appropriate foster care homes for children
title_full_unstemmed FOCES: An experimental expert system to select appropriate foster care homes for children
title_sort foces: an experimental expert system to select appropriate foster care homes for children
publisher Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
publishDate 2017
url http://hdl.handle.net/10919/80055
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