Risk Factors of Entry in Out-of-Home Care: An Empirical Study of Danish Birth Cohorts, 1981–2003

Abstract

This paper presents the results of research on children's risk of being placed in out-of-home care. The purpose is: firstly, to compare children placed in out-of-home care with non-placed children, secondly, to estimate the children's risk of entry into care and finally, to compare the results of this study with the results from similar studies. The study is based on register data from the Statistics Denmark. The sample includes all children with Danish citizenship who were born 1981-2003. In order to estimate the risk of being placed in out-of-home care, we use information about the child, the mother and the father. We discovered that especially children who had a mother on disability pension, children who came from broken homes but also children whose mothers were unemployed or receiving social assistance and children whose mothers had a conviction had a high risk of being placed in care. The mother's characteristics are more important risk factors than the corresponding risk factors of the father. The results, the applied method and the epidemiological inspired analysis make an opportunity to discuss the central concepts and methods of calculation of statistical association, risk, prediction and causal inference in applied sociology and social work. This project is a part of the research project "Welfare interventions in an epidemiological perspective" financed by a grant from the Danish council for strategic research. We thank the editor and two anonymous referees for valuable comments, Elsebeth Lynge, Simon Thorbek and Palle B. Pallesen for useful suggestions and comments and Anders Munk-Nielsen for excellent research assistance.

Entering out-of-home care during childhood: Cumulative incidence study in Canada and Australia

“…Poverty and social disadvantage markedly increased risk of out-of-home care across all three previous population studies (Bebbington & Miles, 1989;Ejrnaes, Ejrnaes, & Frederiksen, 2011;Franzen, Vinnerljung, & Hjern, 2008) Hospital admissions for maternal assaults were associated with a fourfold increased risk (adjusted) in both countries. The risk associated with maternal mental health or substance-related contacts was strongly related to entry to care in both countries, but was more than twice as high in MB (15.41) as in WA (HR = 6.11).…”

“…The risk of entry into care associated with early motherhood (adjusted HR=2.80 for WA and 2.69 for MB) was closer to results from England than Scandinavian studies. Swedish and Danish studies found only marginally increased risks of entry to care for mothers aged under 20 (odds ratios 1.2 -1.9 for different child age groups (Ejrnaes et al, 2011). Teenage birth rates in Australia and Canada are relatively high compared to Scandinavian countries (Lawlor & Shaw, 2004;McKay, 2010), and the rate for Manitoba is well above the national rate for Canada (McKay, 2010).…”

Challenges in Identifying Factors Which Determine the Placement of Children in Care? An International Review

“…This suggests that studies that do not include the primary reason for placement as an independent variable should analyse children and adolescents separately. This has been done by six recent studies (Elmund et al 2007;Knoke et al 2007;Franzen et al 2008;Vinnerljung et al 2008;Andersen and Fallesen 2010;Ejrnaes et al 2011). …”

Serious Mental Illness and Disrupted Caregiving for Children

“…23 Epidemiologic studies examining risk factors for children entering care have identified similar factors to those in our study, including single parent status, unemployment, low educational level, and parents receiving disability pension. 22,[24][25][26] The differences in risks depending on the gender of the ill parent can be interpreted as such: when the mother is ill, the father generally compensates less for the mother's lack of nurturance than the mother does when the father is ill. A possible explanation for this could be that fewer fathers are present in the children's lives because more women than men live alone with children. If the father is estranged from the family when problems arise, he could be less inclined to take on the responsibility of the child.…”