Buffering Effect of Community-Level Social Capital on the Association between Latent Risk Profiles in Families and Child Maltreatment: Findings from South Korea

Background and Purpose: South Korea has widely adopted targeting-focused maltreatment prevention systems through Predictive Risk Models (PRMs). These systems utilize risk factors within families to identify individuals and households for interventions. However, these systems inadvertently create blind spots in child protection due to inequities in data systems and algorithmic bias. Moreover, they often attribute child abuse predominantly to caregivers and families, potentially stigmatizing them, while overlooking cases where families avoid maltreatment despite identified risks, often through protective community efforts.

This study emphasizes the role of community-level social capital (CSC) rooted in bridging networks to promote inclusive, non-stigmatizing prevention programs. As a public good, CSC can reduce maltreatment risks at home by fostering informational support and reinforcing informal control, even for caregivers who might go undetected by screening systems, without stigmatizing them. Prior research has mainly focused on CSC’s promotive effects, leaving buffering mechanisms underexplored. Few studies have sufficiently distinguished the protective effect of CSC from that of individual-level social capital (ISC) in the context of maltreatment prevention. This study aims to fill this gap by examining how both ISC and CSC buffer the impact of distinct patterns of combined risk factors within families on parental maltreatment. These patterns include risk factors not captured in South Korean PRMs’ data.

Methods: This study analyzed data from 2,510 South Korean children (ages 9–17) and their primary caregivers from the 2018 Comprehensive Child Survey, nationally representative data. Parental maltreatment was assessed using children’s reports of physical abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect. Analyses were conducted using Stata 18 with standardized individual weights. Latent profile analysis (LPA) identified distinct patterns based on low relational family functioning, family deprivation, low parenting efficacy, parenting stress, and caregiver depression. CSC was conceptualized as relational and processual community characteristics, including caregiver community participation and trust in their community as individual-driven measures, and collective efficacy. ISC was defined as social support from informal bonding networks of caregivers. Confirmatory factor analysis validated ISC and caregiver community participation as latent variables, with covariance paths specified with caregiver’s community trust and collective efficacy. Hierarchical regression was conducted to examine social capital’s moderation effects using the factor score approach.

Results: LPA identified four risk profiles: Low Risks Except for Parenting Efficacy, Low to Average Risks, High Parenting Stress with Low Relational Family Functioning, and High Family Deprivation with Family Relational and Caregiver Mental Risks. Compared to the low to average risks group, only the third profile was associated with significantly higher levels of parental maltreatment (p < .001). This group, characterized by high parenting stress and low relational family functioning, may experience heightened maltreatment risk. Community trust (p = .024) and collective efficacy (p = .028) significantly mitigated the elevated risk in this group, whereas ISC and caregiver community participation showed no buffering effect.

Conclusions and Implications: The findings highlight the importance of involving diverse community partners in child protection efforts. The results support a shift away from solely risk-centered, individual- or family-level screening toward integrating community-centered strengths and resilience into preventive strategies.