Impact of the Child Maltreatment Registry Policy Change on Child Protection Responses: A Difference-in-Difference Analysis

Background and Purpose: In the U.S., each state maintains a State Child Abuse and Neglect Registry, which records reports and investigations of child abuse and neglect. Individuals suspected of or substantiated for maltreatment are often listed in the central registry. Recent concerns regarding these registries include the standards of proof required for substantiation and the range of maltreatment types included. Although scholars, county agencies, and auditors have proposed changes to improve these systems, one potential aspect that has received far less attention is how changes to registry rules may impact the behaviors or actions of child welfare decision-makers. This study leverages nearly 25 years of population-based child protection data to examine the impact of a state policy change on specific types of maltreatment allegations. We aim to understand how these changes have influenced child welfare practices across a large and diverse state consisting of 58 counties.

Methods: In 2012, California revised its state child abuse registry (i.e., Child Abuse Central Index, CACI) policies to require only substantiated allegations to be submitted, excluding inconclusive allegations. We conducted a quasi-experimental difference-in-difference analysis to evaluate the impact of this policy change on child protection responses. Our analysis utilized linked administrative data from California CPS between 1998 and 2022. We included all screened-in maltreatment reports (N = 13,395,592) involving 3,777,953 unique children aged 0 to 17. De-identified data were analyzed under data use agreements with the California Department of Social Services. The binary outcome, inconclusive disposition, was defined by any report resulting in an inconclusive disposition for any allegation. The independent variable, allegation type, comprised distinct categories of child maltreatment reports. The treated group included reports affected by the policy, including physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and severe neglect, while reports of general neglect served as the control group, remaining unaffected by the policy change throughout the study period.

Results: The demographics of the treated and control groups were similar, and the pre-trend difference remained constant over time. The difference-in-difference analysis revealed that the 2012 CACI policy change significantly increased the average probability of inconclusive dispositions for general neglect allegations by 10% compared to the other affected allegation types. Robustness checks controlling for additional time-varying factors, such as child age and first CPS report, did not substantially change the estimates.

Conclusions and Implications: This study provides empirical evidence that changes to child maltreatment registry policies can impact the decision-making behaviors of CPS agencies. The findings suggest that the 2012 CACI policy change in California led to a higher likelihood of inconclusive dispositions for general neglect allegations. These results have important implications for understanding the unintended consequences of registry policy reforms and highlight the need for careful consideration of how such changes may influence child protection practices.