Abstract: Linking Early Childhood Education and Child Welfare Records to Inform Policy in Los Angeles County (Society for Social Work and Research 22nd Annual Conference - Achieving Equal Opportunity, Equity, and Justice)

Schedule:

Sunday, January 14, 2018: 9:45 AM

Marquis BR Salon 16 (ML 2) (Marriott Marquis Washington DC)

* noted as presenting author

Jacquelyn McCroskey, PhD, Professor, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA

John Prindle, PhD, Research Faculty, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA

Susan Savage, PhD, Research Director, Child Care Resource Center, Chatsworth, CA

Huy Tran Nghiem, MS, Research Programmer, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA

Background and Purpose:

Subsidized Early Childhood Education (ECE) programs provide parents the opportunity to enroll children in programs that would otherwise be out of reach. These essential needs based programs give children from lower-income families opportunities for early education and development, while freeing parents for work, school and caregiving. While enrolled in ECE programs, many families also interact with other service systems including child welfare, but lack of cross-system coordination makes it difficult for parents to communicate their needs, and for service providers integrate services. This presentation describes a research partnership between the Children’s Data Network and the Child Care Resource Center (CCRC). As one of eight Resource and Referral agencies, CCRC serves an area with almost 3 million residents in the northwest region of LA County. Linked administrative data from birth records, ECE and child protective services (CPS) have been used to track patterns of cross-system interaction providing data to inform policy and administrative decision-making.

Methods:

A cohort of three years of California birth data (2010-2012) were probabilistically linked with CPS data (2010-2015) and CCRC data (2010-2016) by unique person identifiers (e.g., names of children and guardians) and non-unique identifiers (birthdates). The final analyses included 105,432 children, including both those born in this region and those born elsewhere in California. Of these, 16,394 young children participated in subsidized ECE programs through CCRC.

Results:

Of children born in the region, 13.6% had participated in ECE subsidized programs before they entered kindergarten and 86.4% had not. Overall, 12.6% of children ages 0-5 in the region had contact with the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), and 26.0% of children in ECE programs also had contact with DCFS. Among children not known to CCRC, 10.2% had a history of DCFS contact. For children not born in this region but living there during the study period, the rate of joint involvement with ECE and DCFS was 34.4%. Children in the CCRC database were more likely than those not in this database to have mothers who enrolled in the WIC Supplemental Nutrition Program (25.4% vs 4.9%, p < 0.001), mothers with lower levels of education (21.5% vs 13.8%, p < 0.001), and fathers with lower education levels (24.5% vs 11.7%, p < 0.001). Lower education levels were associated with DCFS involvement for both mothers (29.9% vs 24.1, p < 0.001) and fathers (28.6% vs 23.6%, p < 0.001). Findings also illustrate the different pathways that families take across ECE program types and funding streams, as well as timing and types of CPS involvement (referral only, substantiation, foster care placement).

Conclusions and Implications:

Demographic and pathway analyses are challenging preconceptions about how and when families access different types of ECE services, and how different levels of CPS involvement (referral only, substantiation, out of home care) affect ECE utilization. Study findings are being used to inform policy in LA County, to improve cross-system coordination and to strengthen early access to ECE services for children who are most at risk of becoming involved in child welfare.