How we score you — and what it means.

SA CoParents is an educational and preparation tool. Whenever we show you a score, this page tells you exactly where that number came from, what it measures, and where it stops.

1. Mediation Readiness (0–100)

What it measures. Your preparation across four dimensions:

• Child-centered focus — the specificity + child-directed framing of the goals you named.
• Priorities clarity — whether you've ranked and rationalised your top mediation topics.
• Communication readiness — your self-assessed patterns around requests, listening, and de-escalation.
• Emotional regulation — the presence of concrete plans for reacting to triggers.

How it's calculated. Deterministic rule-based scoring of the fields you fill in: word-count thresholds, presence of required components, penalty for one-word answers. The exact rules live in backend/summary_scoring.py. There is no ML model in this score.

What it does NOT measure. The score cannot see emotional labor, real-world power dynamics, or coercion. A high score means you've written a lot of child-centered content — it does not mean mediation will be safe or successful for your specific family.

2. Family Violence & Communication Safety Assessment

Source instruments. The Section-1 immediate-safety screen is adapted from the widely-used Danger Assessment (Campbell, 1986) and the HITS screening tool (Sherin et al., 1998), with wording tailored for co-parenting contexts. Section 2 (communication readiness) is original but reviewed against the WEB Scale and the ODARA framework.

Output. A four-level communication pathway — No-direct contact · Structured written · Assisted · Cooperative — with an explanation of why. Any single "yes" in the Section-1 immediate-safety questions triggers the No-direct-contact pathway.

Important limits. This is a screening tool, not a risk assessment. It should not be used in court proceedings without accompanying professional evaluation. Texas crisis hotlines are surfaced in every result regardless of level, and the "pathway" and "Texas resources" sections of the PDF cannot be hidden by the user when sharing.

3. Special Needs Assessment (7 domains)

What it measures. Coordination between homes across seven domains that special-needs coordination research typically identifies as high-friction: Communication, Medical/Therapy, Behavioral, Education/IEP, Sensory & Routine, Emergency Prep, Transitions.

How it's calculated. Each domain is scored 0–100 based on the Likert-style answers you and (optionally) your co-parent give. The composite "consistency between homes" score is computed from paired responses where both parents answered. Rule source: backend/special_needs_scoring.py.

Not a substitute for. An IEP, a 504 plan, a paediatric neuropsychological evaluation, or a family therapist's care plan. The tool helps you organise information for those professionals — it does not replace them.

4. AI Coach responses

The interactive coach uses Anthropic Claude 4.5 via the Emergent LLM key. Prompts are constrained by a system instruction that forbids diagnosis, dosage advice, legal advice, or crisis triage. When triggered by risk keywords, the coach immediately surfaces local hotlines and offers to switch to the Safety Assessment. AI responses are not stored on Anthropic's servers for training. See our Privacy Policy for details.

5. "Your next three steps" recommendation engine

Deterministic, not AI. Given your latest scores across all assessments, a fixed decision table picks up to three highest-leverage next actions. Rule source: backend/next_steps_routes.py. This means the same inputs always produce the same recommendations — an important transparency guarantee.

Where we lack empirical validation

SA CoParents is a new tool. The Mediation Readiness, Special Needs 7-domain, and Communication Readiness scores are not yet externally validated by a peer-reviewed study. We are actively collecting anonymized outcome signals (with opt-in consent) to publish reliability + concurrent-validity work in future.

In the meantime, use every score as a conversation starter with your mediator or therapist — not as the last word.

Change log & scoring history

Every meaningful change to a scoring rule is recorded in the public repository at github.com/mattsossi-cmyk/sacoparents-app. If a rule change would materially shift your historical scores, we recompute in a way that keeps your longitudinal chart honest: we snapshot the version tag alongside each stored score, and only recompute forward.

Questions or peer review requests

SA CoParents · 16607 Blanco #703, San Antonio, Texas 78232