What Is in the Policy? the Impact of State Policy Variation on Child Maltreatment Report Outcomes

Background and Purpose: Mandated reporting policies play an important role in the identification of child maltreatment across the United States and have been in place since the late 1960s yet the efficacy of these policies effectively improve the identification of child maltreatment continues to be debated. Although policies such as CAPTA brought some alignment to child maltreatment reporting policies across states, it also provided states with some flexibility on their policies and system design. This flexibility resulted in substantial variability across states, which is important to account for when evaluating the impact of the policies on individual report outcomes. Considering the strong relationship documented in the literature between report source and report outcomes but the lacking state-level breakdown in proportion of reports made from each report group (professional, non-professional, and unclassified) and reporter subcategory (law enforcement, medical personal, anonymous reports, etc.), a state level breakdown is provided utilizing national data to examine how policy variability, system design, and state variation in report sources predicts substantiation and foster care entry.

Methods: This study utilized the RAPIDS data set, with census data and the SCAN database for FY 2019. The study included 2,724,863 children from 38 states. Descriptives, bivariate and multilevel model analysis were conducted. Multilevel analysis used a bottom-up approach was used. Four models were estimated for each outcome (substantiation and foster care entry).

Results: The bivariate analysis provided insight regarding reporter group and subcategory per state, as well as potential data quality issues that can impact future research with report source. Multivariate analysis indicated that there was significant variability across the states. Across the models for substantiation and foster care entry, the report source was a significant predictor. Reports from professionals were more likely to be substantiated and enter foster care than reports from non-professionals. However, report sources only accounted for a small percent in the outcomes across the states. When considering state policy variables and system design, none of the selected variables impacted substantiation. On the other hand, reports in states that had implemented an alternative response program, at the state or county level, had higher odds of foster care entry.

Conclusions and Implications: Research exploring how various policy and system components impact report outcomes continues to grow and is important given the calls for the repeal of mandated reporting policies and current mixed literature on the impact of mandated reporting policy on outcomes. This study suggests that policy and system design may not have a strong association on report outcomes; however, like previous research, report sources predict substantiation and foster care entry. This finding strengthens the belief that certain reporters’ vantage point may better position them to identify situations that meet state thresholds to indicate maltreatment occurred. Altogether, these findings suggest that future policies and system design may need to consider that different reporters identify different family situations and needs to identify maltreatment. Developing a response to capture that may help with matching families to better supports and relieving some of the burden that child welfare systems experience.