The Recurrence of Maltreatment in Family Preservation: Revisiting a Community-Based Model

Background and Purpose:

The Family Preservation Program (FP) is a community-based treatment model that provides in-home services to strengthen and preserve families that have experienced child abuse or neglect related to substance use, mental health, or domestic violence. FP provides in-home services offered from 6 months to 12 months depending upon the family’s needs as well as an array of services including case management, parenting, housing, and counseling for mental health, substance abuse, and domestic violence. Although there is a long history of examining outcomes related to FP including periodic attempts to examine recidivism, few studies have systematically looked at the impact of FP on federal measures measuring recidivism. This study provides preliminary outcomes of the implementation of a recidivism dashboard capturing the recurrence of maltreatment for families receiving FP services in Los Angeles County.

Methods

The recurrence rates were systematically captured by the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) using administrative data. The sample size consisted of 79,717 children over a 15-quarter period between September of 2013 and March 2017. Of these children, 11,569 of their families received FP (14.5%) whereas 68,148 did not receive FP (85%). Recidivism was measured using the federal Child and Family Services Reviews (CFSR-3) definition for the recurrence of maltreatment. That is, of all children who were victims of a substantiated maltreatment allegation during a quarter, what percent were victims of another substantiated maltreatment allegation within 12 months of their initial report? Subgroup analyses were conducted by ethnicity, child age, and DCFS office location.

Findings

Preliminary analyses completed in May 2017 indicated that the FP recurrence rates were lower than comparison children whose families did not receive FP over 15 calendar quarters. In addition, FP children had an average recurrence rate of 6.9%, which is below the 9.1% national standard and below the DCFS performance of 8.7% for the comparison timeframe. The FP recurrence rate is very similar to a 2013 study that found a recurrence rate of 7.3% for families receiving FP between 2005 and 2010. Additional analyses that examined length of time in FP found a dosage effect in that families receiving 3 months of less of FP services had higher recurrence rates whereas families receiving FP from 4 to 12 months had recurrence rate that were progressively lower. Last, subgroup analyses found higher recurrence rates African-American children and children 1 and under.

Conclusion and Implication

This study adds to the evidence of the positive outcomes associated with FP for families that have been impacted by substance use, mental health, and/or domestic violence. Furthermore, the results are presented with respect to the intensive collaboration that took place for the systematic capture of recurrence data as well as how these data are being used to facilitate data-driven decision making to improve practice and reduce recurrence rates in FP.