The Influence of Child Welfare Involvement on Parent Engagement Among Immigrant Families Who Receive Home Visiting Services

Background: Child protective services (CPS) contact is most common in early childhood and may influence engagement with home visitation, but no research has studied this for immigrant families. The current study examines the contextual risk factors associated with immigrant families’ CPS involvement and the potential effect of that involvement on the level of early childhood home visiting intervention engagement for those families. The current study addresses the following research questions (1) what demographic risk factors are associated with family self-report of prior child protective services involvement among immigrant families? And (2) does immigrant family CPS involvement influence the level of engagement in home visiting services?

Methods: The present study used administrative data from the Parents as Teachers (PAT) home visiting program with a sample of 4896 immigrant families. Logistic regression was conducted to examine what demographic factors influence immigrant families’ child welfare involvement. The logistic regression model of CPS involvement was used to develop propensity scores. A multinomial regression analysis was conducted of the level of home visitation engagement according to prior CPS involvement using a sample weighted by propensity score. The marginal effects of child welfare involvement on immigrant families’ home-visiting program engagement were estimated.

Results: The logistic regression model was statistically significant X² (16, N = 4902) = 303.74, p < 0.001. Adjusted for the immigrant family native region, child age, gender, and sample clustering by program site, substance abuse (OR= 4.74, p<.001, 95%CI [2.29-9.79]), intimate partner violence (OR= 5.31, p<.001, 95%CI [3.21-8.79]), single parenthood (OR= 3.25, p<.001, 95%CI [1.84-5.72]), and teen parenthood (OR=2.16, p =.014, 95%CI [1.17-3.99]) were significant risk factors for CPS involvement among immigrant families. Multinomial regression results show families with child welfare involvement were more likely to engage in home visiting services for between 90 days and one year compared to over one year (RRR: 3.64, p<.01, 95%CI: [1.65-8.03]). Additionally, a history of CPS involvement decreased the probability of early dropout from home visitation (less than 90 days) compared to 90 to 365 days by 27 percentage points.

Conclusion: These findings show child maltreatment risk factors for immigrant families are similar to those of nonimmigrant families involved with the child welfare system. Results also showed that risks for child maltreatment did not differ by demographic characteristics such as parent race and ethnicity, immigrant native region, and community type. While CPS-involved families appear more likely to engage in home visiting intervention successfully, they were less likely to be long-stayers in PAT. Further research is needed to identify why these families do not persist for more than a year.