The Timing and State Variation of Child Maltreatment Reports in the First Year of Life in the United States

Background and Purpose:

State child welfare agencies received over 4 million reports of child maltreatment in 2016, a 14.1 increase from 2012 (USHHS, 2018). Of the reports that were substantiated, children under 1 year of age were found to be to be victims of child maltreatment at the highest rate of all age groups at 24.8 per 1,000 children, compared to the next highest rate at 11.9 per 1,000 children, identifying this time period as critical (USHHS, 2018). However, what is not clear is when during that first year these reports are occurring and if there are variations by state in this timing. Therefore, the research aims for this project are to calculate the age-specific report rates, or the timing of child maltreatment reports, across states and years.

 

Methods:

This project utilized restricted data from National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) that included all official child maltreatment reports from all 50 states and DC for years 2006-2015 (N = 36,681,688). Additionally, data regarding the number of births by state and year was obtained from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) WONDER online database of births.

Variables identifying the timing of the report were created using the restricted days to report variable. The times identified were prior to birth (< 0 days), the first week of life (0-7 days), the first month (8-31 days), two through three months (32-90 days), four through six months (91-180 days), seven through nine months (181-270 days), and 10-12 months (271-365 days). The age-specific report rates (_nR_x) were calculated by dividing the number of reports by the number of births. A total report rate (TRR) was calculated for the entire year where: TRR = ∑ _nR_x.

 

Results:

In 2006, the time period with the highest rate of reports is the first 7 days of life with 27.9 reports per 1,000 births and the time period with the lowest rate of reports was before birth (0.6 per 1,000 births). The rates for each time period was higher in 2015 than 2006, except for the first 7 days which was slightly lower at 27.0 reports per 1,000 births.

In terms of average age-specific report rates, wide variation by states were found. West Virginia (348 reports per 1,000 births), Pennsylvania (262), and New York (246) had the highest average total report rates for the entire first year. In contrast, Hawaii (28 reports per 1,000 births), Minnesota (38), and Maryland (41) had the lowest average total report rates. For report rates before birth, West Virginia (5 reports per 1,000 births), South Carolina (4), and Michigan (4) had the highest rates while 7 states had no reports before birth.

Conclusions and Implications:

This research adds to the existing child welfare knowledge by identifying that child maltreatment reports occur more frequently during an infant’s first week of life than any other time period during their first year. Further, the variation identified by states, including reports prior to birth, suggests consequential differences in policies and practices by states.