An Assessment of the Extent of Child Maltreatment Using Administrative Databases

Abstract

This study examined the extent of violence toward children and factors associated with child maltreatment in Florida using a cohort of children (N=499,330) who were adjudged to be victims of maltreatment between July 1, 1996, and June 30, 2003. To assess the extent of maltreatment, five indicators were proposed and examined. Multivariate analyses found that prior referral, having more than one type of maltreatment during an initial incident, and caregiver absence best predicted the recurrence of maltreatment. Caregivers' alcohol and substance use were strong predictors of neglect and threatened harm but not of abuse. Finally, multilevel analyses found that older, nonminority girls with histories of prior referrals were significantly (psuedo-zs>2.00) more likely to experience high degrees of incident severity. Caregivers' substance use, excluding alcohol, also was significantly linked to incident severity. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Caregiver Substance Use and Child Outcomes: A Systematic Review

“…Caregiver substance misuse was strongly related to findings at the systems level with a number of studies focusing on the number of referrals and rereferrals to CPS for families with a substance-using caregiver compared to other families (Barth et al, 2006;McGlade, Ware, & Crawford, 2009;Yampolskaya & Banks, 2006). Consistently, having a substance-using caregiver was associated with a higher rate of referral to CPS, having a higher rate of rereferrals to CPS, and having a higher rate of substantiated cases within the system.…”

Testing a Social Mechanism: Does Alcohol Outlet Density Moderate the Relationship Between Levels of Alcohol Use and Child Physical Abuse?

“…While a rich literature suggests that heavy drinking, alcohol abuse, and alcohol dependence are associated with physically abusive parenting, other studies have not found a positive relationship (Harter & Taylor, 2000; Widom & Hiller-Sturmhöfel, 2001). Additionally, a cohort study of children involved with the child welfare system in Florida found that reoccurrence of abuse was less likely in families that where perpetrator had used alcohol (Yampolskaya & Banks, 2006). These disparate findings may be due to how alcohol use was measured and the populations studied (Testa & Smith, 2009).…”

Factors Predicting Child Maltreatment Fatalities: A Competing Risk Model

“…For example, previous studies have reported that prior involvement with the child protection system was greatly associated with the likelihood of re-referral and recurrence of substantiated maltreatment. Similarly, families in which children died as a result of homicide had the highest proportion of substantiated referrals to the child protective services compared to families in which children died of natural causes or by accident (English, Marshall, Brummel, & Orme, 1999;Krous et al, 2006;Yampolskaya & Banks, 2006). Furthermore, when children from low-income families with prior maltreatment reports were compared to those without prior reports, much higher rates of death were found in a group with prior maltreatment reports (Jonson-Reid et al, 2007).…”