The Impact of Structural Disadvantage on Child Protective Service Recurrence

Poverty is a risk factor for child maltreatment and has been used to explain the overrepresentation of poor families in the child welfare system (CWS) and the high rates of subsequent and substantiated subsequent reports (SR/SSR). Less understood is the effect of community level factors such as neighborhood economic/social conditions on child abuse/neglect recurrence. Reports of child abuse/neglect are clustered in densely populated and socially-fragmented areas and the cumulative risk of experiencing a substantiated investigation is higher for children living in poor and/or non-white neighborhoods. There is also a relationship between socioeconomic disadvantage and disease occurrence suggesting that social factors serve as proxies for lack of access to critical resources.

This study aimed to assess the relationship between structural and community factors and recurrence of CWS involvement, and the effect of socioeconomic disadvantage compared with other known risk factors for SR/SSRs. Specifically, how is the community environment associated with the chance of receiving an SR and/or SSR for CWS involved families.

The sample consisted of geocoded family-level accepted reports of child maltreatment to a state child welfare agency between 2014-2018 for families with no prior child welfare history and with a 12-month follow-up (n=46,900). These data were matched to the Area Deprivation index (ADI), using state deciles calculated from the 2015 ACS to create 10 ranked categories of neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage, 1 being the least disadvantaged and 9 being the most. Rare events logistic regression was conducted in R using the Zelig package, tested with imputed and non-imputed data, results were similar, non-imputed data are presented. The primary outcomes of interest were whether an SR or SSR was received within 12-months of the family’s first report.

Odds of recurrent child maltreatment were higher for families living in census tracts that were more disadvantaged. Further, higher levels of disadvantage had as strong as or a stronger effect as other risk factors on predicting a negative outcome. Families living in the most disadvantaged areas were 52% more likely to have an SR. Each ADI level above 1 was associated with statistically significantly increased odds of an SSR, increased odds ranged from 30% at ADI 2 to 92% at ADI 9. The ADI also had a similar effect as other common risk factors; there was a 31% increase in the odds of an SR between ADI 1-9 compared with a 29% increase for having mental health/substance abuse or 27% increase for families with domestic violence. ADI level also mattered more than risk factors in predicting SRs across racial groups, but the effect of the environment was stronger for white families than Black or Latine.

This study highlights the association between environmental disadvantage to the likelihood of child maltreatment recurrence. Addressing socioeconomic factors is generally not in the standard purview of child welfare services; however, the growing literature in this area suggests that child welfare systems should consider and address these basic social conditions as primary contributors to recurrence along with the more traditional individual and family-based risk factors.