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Child Protective Services launched an updated assessment tool Friday that officials say will help guide case managers through their investigations, ensuring they do thorough and comprehensive work.

But the tool has drawn heavy criticism from those who say it involves excessive paperwork, is outdated in its approach and won't necessarily help the agency safeguard kids.

CPS is under intense legislative and public scrutiny after high-profile deaths of children who were in its charge here, including Brandon Williams, 5; Tyler Payne, 5; and his younger sister Ariana, 4.

A completed sample assessment distributed internally at CPS is 81 pages, raising concerns that investigators, already juggling heavy caseloads, will lose time to filling out the assessment.

Also, one leading expert in child welfare assessment said the tool is reflective of what was used 20 years ago, and that it will do nothing to make children safer.

Similar assessment tools are used in other states, CPS officials said Friday, and the new changes were brought about with the help of consultants and feedback from CPS staff.

Without the changes, "we weren't able to see how they (investigators) made their decisions," said Janice Mickens, an administrator with CPS. "We need to have something that guides us throughout this process."

So after a brief trial period in Pima County, the assessment tool was launched statewide Friday despite several lingering technical glitches.

For example, investigators can't save their work on the computer until the lengthy document is filled out. Then, once it's saved, it can't be reopened, meaning that additional information has to be added as an addendum. There is also no date/time stamp to document when information is input, so, in theory, a person could back-date their work in the unsaved document.

After reviewing a copy of the 81-page sample assessment, Christopher Baird, vice president for the Children's Research Center, a nonprofit group that has developed assessment tools for 24 states as well as Australia and Canada, said he was "kind of astonished."

"It is very poorly designed, and it really represents where the field was 20 years ago," he said. "It's the kind of thing we came into the field to work on replacing."

Asked about the length, he said it is "one of the longest systems we have ever encountered."

CPS spokeswoman Liz Barker Alvarez said the newly implemented tool is about 50 pages when not filled out. The length is needed to ensure more thorough and complete investigations, CPS officials said.

"Sometimes staff forgets that they should see every child or every caregiver in the home," said Linda Johnson, CPS's state policy manager.

To achieve this goal, the tool does not use a chronological investigation narrative, but instead divides the narrative by the people interviewed. There are sections for parents, children, officials and others.

CPS officials said they realize such a format could possibly be confusing, but that it guarantees investigators are interviewing all the right people.

"The reason we separated it out that way was, again, that staff understand that they need to interview all persons in the home," Johnson said.

She and Mickens declined to say how often investigators fail to interview people they are supposed to.

The new tool assesses child safety and risk, and it is the risk portion that Baird said is antiquated.

The risk portion is modeled after an assessment tool developed in Washington.

That tool was developed in 1986 — although it has been updated.

The general philosophy behind it and the Arizona model is what is known as a "consensus-based" approach, meaning the case manager assesses risk from a number of areas like the child's behavior and development, severity of abuse and the qualities of the caretaker, among others.

Such an approach has been criticized in social work academic journals for being subjective, overly broad and using the same variables to predict different types of abuse and neglect.

Johnson said the Washington model was chosen as a basis for the changes partly because it creates "uniformity" in decision-making. That is, by using it, different case managers should usually come to similar conclusions about the same cases.

Research suggests, however, that the model doesn't necessarily create uniformity.

One academic study, led by Baird, found the Washington model was "no better than chance."

Also, a review published by the University of California-Berkeley said the Washington assessment did not "perform very well" in predicting future child maltreatment.

In an e-mail, Baird said the Arizona model is "at best, based very loosely on the Washington risk assessment instrument."

"Perhaps more telling is that the state of Washington is in the process of developing a research-based assessment instrument to replace the current tool," he wrote.

Rep. Jonathan Paton, a Tucson Republican who is taking part in legislative hearings on CPS, said his main concerns were the technical glitches and the amount of time it will take to fill out the document.

"I can agree that you want an assessment which is uniform," he said in an e-mail. "But the 81 pages seems excessive. I can envision a lot of frustration from workers who have too many cases as it is."

Mickens said she doesn't think the changes would add much, if any, additional time. She said workers were already filling out many of the same forms, only the forms were kept separate. The newly implemented tool simply brings those forms together.

But the agency also didn't study how long it took investigators — many of whom average about 12 new cases a month — to fill out the new form.

"We didn't really look at that," Mickens said. "This is a critical tool. We believe it's important to ask the right questions."

Despite such concerns raised by Baird and Paton, CPS officials see the new changes as a step toward child-welfare reform.

In a memo sent across CPS, Deputy Director Ken Deibert said the changes "will move this organization even closer to achieving the goals of reforming our child welfare system."