Sunday, 16 January 2005 - 10:30 AM

This presentation is part of: Findings from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW): Applying Innovative Methods to Understanding Services and Outcomes for Maltreated Children

Family-based Child Welfare Services and the Mental Health of Young Children: Using a Propensity Scores Matching Approach to Inform Mental Health Service Planning

A substantial number of the NSCAW children show signs of diminished mental health, yet very few are receiving mental health services. Young children who experience maltreatment are particularly vulnerable to the effects of maltreatment for many reasons. This paper asks the question of when specialty mental health services are warranted, given a maltreatment investigation that occurs when a child is between 3-10 years old (N=1524). At the time of the 18-month follow-up interview, 36% of these children have borderline or clinical scores on the Child Behavior Checklist. More than one-quarter have internalizing symptoms at 18-months, and over two-thirds have externalizing symptoms. Family-based services (FBS), such as family preservation and child monitoring visits, are provided to approximately one-third of families with children this age in the first 18-months. An equal proportion of children (29%) have received some type of mental health service, such as from a community mental health center, a psychologist or social worker, or a family doctor, in the first 18-months.

Selection bias into services must be accounted for in assessing the relationship between mental health service provision and outcomes. Selection bias may result from individual case characteristics that make it more likely that a child would receive services (e.g., exposure to sexual abuse rather than neglect) or from structural characteristics like the extent of linkages between child welfare and mental health agencies, agency size, or agency urbanicity. Propensity score matching (PSM) can be used to synthesize “treatment” and “control” conditions regarding services receipt through the identification of a group of children who did not receive services, but who have characteristics that match those who did. The predicted probabilities that the non-service children would have received services, given their case and agency characteristics, are used to create more equivalent groups. In this analysis, we will use PS2Match, the caliper matching procedure, to select a matched sample. Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) is used to relate services, and the timing of services, to children’s mental health over the course of the first 18- months following intake. This approach allows for the identification of interactions between early mental health services and later outcomes.

See more of Findings from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW): Applying Innovative Methods to Understanding Services and Outcomes for Maltreated Children
See more of Symposium

See more of Celebrating a Decade of SSWR (January 13 - 16, 2005)