Child Welfare Service Responses to Maltreated Children and Youth with Aggressive and Criminal Behaviour Problems in Ontario, Canada

Background and purpose: Despite evidence indicating that child welfare interventions are profoundly consequential for maltreated children and youth with behavioural challenges, little is known about how child welfare service providers respond upon identifying aggressive and criminal behaviours in maltreated young people. The purpose of this paper is to extend existing research by: (1) providing an overall picture of how child welfare service providers respond to children and youth who exhibit aggressive and/or criminal behaviours; (2) examining a broad range of supportive services that child welfare agencies offer to children and families, including ongoing child welfare services, referrals to specialized services, and out-of-home placement; and (3) utilizing a developmental lens to examine both young children with early aggression and older children and youth exhibiting aggressive and/or criminal behaviours.

Methods: Data from the Ontario Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect 2013 (OIS-2013) were analyzed, the fifth cycle of a province-wide study on the incidence of reported child maltreatment and the characteristics of children and families investigated by child welfare services in Ontario, Canada. A subsample of 1,446 substantiated maltreatment investigations involving children age four and older was examined. Chi-square and logistic regression analyses were used to determine whether there were any differences in service provision for maltreated children and youth depending on their aggressive and/or criminal behaviour.

Results: Several key findings emerged from this analysis: (1) child welfare workers perform a crucial gateway service provider function, referring young people and their families to ancillary service systems, (2) maltreated young children who demonstrate aggression, despite representing a high-risk group, are not more likely to receive services; this may represent a missed opportunity for secondary prevention of maltreatment and intervention to address the harms associated with maltreatment that has already occurred, and (3) a large proportion of children and youth entering out-of-home care demonstrates aggressive (39%) or criminal (21%) behaviour, particularly older children and adolescents, and these young people are more likely to enter restrictive care settings.

Conclusions and implications: The findings indicate that a substantial minority of young people receiving services from the child welfare system demonstrates aggressive and/or criminal behaviours, particularly young people who enter out-of-home placements. The findings of this analysis suggest a need for further attention to externalizing, antisocial, and criminal behaviour problems among child welfare agencies and policy makers, in order to ensure that child welfare workers are adequately trained in assessing behavioural challenges and delivering interventions accordingly. Further, there is a need to develop, disseminate, and evaluate child welfare interventions geared specifically to supporting maltreated children with behaviour problems, as well as caregivers to these children. Contact with the child welfare system represents a critical point in the lives of maltreated children and adolescents, and it is important that resources be available to support child welfare workers, foster parents, group home care providers, and other caregivers in their work with children and youth with externalizing, antisocial, and criminal behaviour problems.