Parenting and Proximity to Social Services: Lessons from Los Angeles County in the Community Context of Child Neglect

Background and Purpose:

 

The neighborhoods in which we live may have profound influences on our health, well-being, and ability to function in many realms, including our ability to parent.  According to social disorganization theory, neighborhoods that are characterized by layers of disadvantage related to poverty, unemployment, crime, and population turnover can affect the residents in a myriad of ways that are harmful, including increasing risk of child maltreatment. Social disorganization theory contends that neighborhoods are “disorganized” when they lack a structure to help maintain social controls that allow their residents to realize shared values. Extensions of social disorganization theory suggest that the local availability of institutional resources, like social services, both reflect and contribute to neighborhood (dis)organization. It is posited that local institutions help community members establish agreement around common values and goals, and participation in these institutions can also give residents the confidence and tools to act, not only on their personal goals for themselves and their families, but also on their shared vision for their community. 

The current study focuses on the potentially protective role that geographic access to social services (child care, domestic violence, mental health/substance abuse, and poverty) play in child maltreatment.

Methods: 

The data come from a study conducted in 50 cities in the state of California.  The sample is restricted to 438 parents living in Los Angeles County, the county for which service data were available.  Service data were available from the publicly available “Rainbow Resource Directory.”  Driving distance was calculated from each parent to the nearest service of each type, including child care, domestic violence, mental health/substance abuse, and poverty.  Child neglect was measured using parent self-report data on the Multidimensional Neglect Behavior Scale.  Covariates included depression and anxiety, drug and alcohol use, poverty, education level, unemployment, race, child and respondent sex and age, and marital status.  Ordinary least squares regression was used to estimate the relationship between proximity to services and child neglect. 

Results: 

Living farther from mental health and substance abuse services was associated with higher levels of child neglect behavior (p<0.05).  There were no statistically significant relationships between neglect and distance to the other service types.  Additionally, having higher levels of socioeconomic disadvantage, having an older child, and the respondent being male and older were all associated with higher levels of neglect (p<0.05).  Finally, respondents who were white reported lower levels of neglectful behaviors (p<0.05).  

Conclusions and Implications:

 

Results suggest that the proximity of mental health and substance abuse services plays a protective role in child maltreatment. Thus, embedding these types of services in communities with high rates of child protective services involvement may be a strategic way to reduce rates of child neglect.  Future research should seek to disentangle the pathways through which proximity to mental health and substance abuse services reduce neglectful behaviors. An integral next step is to investigate these relationships using multi-level modeling to appropriately account for neighborhood-level characteristics independent of child and family traits and service utilization.