Factors influencing resubstantiation of child neglect in South Korea: A comparison with other maltreatment cases

Abstract

While a high prevalence of child neglect cases has been reported by Child Protective Services (CPS) in Western countries, child neglect cases reported to South Korea's Child Protection Agency (CPA) present different trends than those in Western countries. Nevertheless, child neglect is an understudied area within child welfare. Thus, a need exists to investigate the unique characteristics of child neglect cases substantiated by the CPA in Korea. This study investigates the unique characteristics of child neglect cases and examines how factors associated with the resubstantiation of these cases differ from those of other maltreatment cases. Using CPA administrative data, we employed a multilevel discrete‐time hazard analysis to analyze the risk and protective factors associated with the resubstantiation of child neglect cases and compared the results with other maltreatment cases. In both cases, younger children, perpetrators with alcohol problems, families receiving welfare, and months of agency operation were associated with resubstantiation. For child neglect cases, the provision of child and parent services, and CPAs located in metropolitan area were protective factors that reduced the risk of resubstantiation. The finding in this study highlights the need to expand the provision of services to child neglect cases to prevent resubstantiation.

Estimating child maltreatment cases that could be alcohol‐attributable in New Zealand

“…In the case of maltreatment this is of great concern, as children cannot remove themselves from the situation of harm. Some previous research has shown associations between caregiver alcohol use, in particular alcohol abuse [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] and child maltreatment. However, to our knowledge, no published studies have begun the work of estimating the disease burden of child maltreatment attributable to risk factors, such as alcohol, in the population.…”

“…Cohort studies have assessed the risk related to alcohol consumption and maltreatment (e.g. previous works [5][6][7][8][9][10][12][13][14][15]). However, a number of studies have relied on social services data (e.g.…”

“…However, a number of studies have relied on social services data (e.g. previous studies [6–8, 12, 13]) and welfare worker attributions of alcohol have been shown to be often inaccurate [16]. Sometimes objective data alcohol data have been used, but have only focussed upon one type of outcome data, such as hospital data [5, 11, 15].…”