Case, Service and Family Characteristics of Households that Experience a Child Maltreatment Fatality in the United States

Abstract

Child maltreatment fatalities have increasingly received attention over the past three decades and yet there is a dearth of information concerning case, service and family/ household factors associated with maltreatment fatalities. This is a US multi-state study of 135 child welfare workers who experienced the death of a child on their caseload. They reported on the case, service and family/household characteristics of a child who died on their caseload. Results indicate that workers had seen victims one week prior to their death and were closely monitoring families. The most frequently mentioned family characteristics included: parental unemployment, parental mental health, experiencing a major life event and parents' inappropriate age expectations of the child. Parental alcohol and substance use were more common among infant victims; and parental perceptions of the child being 'difficult' were more common among older victims. The results are discussed with regard to future research and prevention for the field. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. KEY PRACTITIONER MESSAGES:The primary findings of this study indicate that:• Workers have regular contact with children leading up to the time of their death.• Children die even when they are being closely monitored and have had a full-risk assessment.• Families where children died were not using very many services.

Does a Social Work Degree Predict Practice Orientation? Measuring Strengths-Based Practice Among Child Welfare Workers With the Strengths-Based Practices Inventory–Provider Version

“…Responses were received from 493 CWWs, 453 of which were complete enough to retain for analyses. More detail about this study can be found in additional publications (Douglas, 2012a(Douglas, , 2012b(Douglas, , 2013. Table 1 shows that almost 77% of the child welfare workers in this sample identified as White; 26.5% identified as a racial minority with the largest percentage being African Americans/Blacks (16.3%).…”

Fatal Factors for Preschoolers

“…Babysitters are offenders in less than 1% of all child homicides. Other research has similarly reported that parents are the primary perpetrators of child homicide (Bennett et al, 2006; Douglas, 2013; Douglas & Mohn, 2014; Klevens & Leeb, 2010). And, yet others separate biologically from step parents and argue that men will be more likely to kill children who they did not father or whose fatherhood they question, while women will be more likely to kill children if they are born with abnormalities (Daly & Wilson, 1988).…”

The Presence of Maltreatment Fatality-Related Content in Pre-service Child Welfare Training Curricula: A Brief Report of 20 States

“…Caregivers who kill children or who are responsible for a child dying are usually in early adulthood, under the age of 30 (Herman-Giddens et al 2003;Kunz and Bahr 1996) and often times mental health problems are present (Douglas 2013;Fein 1979). These caregivers frequently make demands on their children which are developmentally inappropriate (Douglas 2013;Korbin 1987), such as wanting an infant to be ''respectful'' of a parent's work schedule. Parents who are responsible for their children's deaths may also see their children as ''difficult'' (Chance and Scannapieco 2002;Fein 1979), which in combination with parental stress can be a lethal combination (Graham et al 2010).…”

“…Perpetrators of CMFs are almost always caregivers, specifically parents or parents' intimate partners (Klevens and Leeb 2010). Caregivers who kill children or who are responsible for a child dying are usually in early adulthood, under the age of 30 (Herman-Giddens et al 2003;Kunz and Bahr 1996) and often times mental health problems are present (Douglas 2013;Fein 1979). These caregivers frequently make demands on their children which are developmentally inappropriate (Douglas 2013;Korbin 1987), such as wanting an infant to be ''respectful'' of a parent's work schedule.…”