Do Social Services Matter for Child Maltreatment Prevention?: The Role of Parents' Knowledge of Available Local Social Services

Background & Purpose:

Children are more likely to achieve optimal development emotionally and socially in families with parents who are strongly connected in family and community networks.  Further, parents who are socially isolated are more likely to maltreat their children.  Social support includes relationships with family and friends who can provide both material and nonmaterial resources, such as financial support, assistance with childcare, and counseling. 

Despite wide recognition that increased social support is associated with positive parenting behaviors, there is limited understanding regarding the mechanisms through which the neighborhood context can increase or hinder social connections.  The current study examines the association between the availability of local social service programs and parents’ perception of social support.

Methods:

The sample is comprised of 1,326 parents from Franklin County, Ohio; 1,053 were recruited from WIC clinics and 273 from childcare centers.  The key dependent variable, child maltreatment, was estimated using the child neglect and physical abuse subscales of the Conflict Tactics Scale – Parent to Child version.  The independent variables include the perceived availability of social services and perceived social support.  Availability of social services was assessed using a count of the number of different types of social services parents reported were available. Multivariate Poisson regressions were conducted to test the relationship between variables; multiple imputation using chained equations was utilized to account for missing data.

Results:

The results indicate that greater availability of social services is associated with lower levels of child abuse and neglect.  Additionally, the availability of social services moderates the relationship between social support and child maltreatment, such that the relationship between social support and child maltreatment is stronger for parents who report living in neighborhoods with greater availability of services.  The findings suggest that increasing services and awareness of such services might be an opportunity for child maltreatment prevention.

Conclusions & Implications:

Given the association between social support and positive parenting behaviors, it is important to understand the ways in which these connections between parents can be enhanced.  The current study found that the availability of local social services increases a parent’s perception of social support.  This may occur through making connections with other community members at the program, by feeling supported by the staff of the program, or by having other basic needs met that might improve outlook in general.  Improving social support might be a stated goal of some of the social service programs, and in other cases it might be an unintended positive effect.  Further research is needed to understand the mechanisms through which social services improve social support, to inform strategies to continue to improve connections between parents.