Session: Communities & Child Welfare: Investigating the Role of Place-Based Inequalities (Society for Social Work and Research 29th Annual Conference)

Child maltreatment report rates to child protection systems (CPS) vary significantly across communities. Similarly, there are numerous place-based inequalities that differentially impact communities. Despite this, research exploring the community-level relationships between CPS interactions and geographical social stratification factors is limited. This is particularly important considering the U.S.'s federalist approach to CPS, where states, and often counties, run their own CPS agencies. To develop effective policies, services, and interventions to address child maltreatment, it is crucial to disentangle the relationships between CPS interactions and community characteristics.

The four papers in this symposium advance the child welfare field by analyzing the relationships between community contexts and CPS measures. These measures include the volume of reports, the nature of maltreatment allegations, subsequent CPS involvement, and the roles of those making CPS reports. The first paper explores the associations between neighborhood factors and CPS investigations in Michigan, identifying differences across urban and rural contexts. The second paper analyzes relationships between zip code-level child poverty rates and maltreatment allegations (neglect, physical abuse, and sexual abuse) in Illinois. The third paper uses longitudinal data from California to examine if community-level factors influence the relationships between adolescent CPS outcomes and early/middle childhood risk scores. The fourth paper investigates if community-level factors are related to rates of CPS reports by reporter type (education, law enforcement, medical, etc.) for school-aged children (ages 5-17 years).

Collectively, these papers contribute new knowledge regarding child welfare that can inform the development of policies, prevention services, and interventions. This symposium is particularly timely given the opportunities for tertiary prevention afforded by the Family First Prevention Services Act. A child welfare scholar will serve as the discussant, providing overarching comments on the four papers and facilitating a discussion with the audience about implications for policy, practice, and future research.