Understanding the Effects of COVID-19 on Child Maltreatment Reporting Among Rural Versus Urban Communities in the United States.

The onset of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic impacted child protective services (CPS) reporting systems in the United States. It may have also led to widened gaps between rural and urban communities in child maltreatment (CM) report rates due to decreased interaction between children and mandated reporters especially in urban jurisdictions. Using data from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System, this study tests the hypothesis that during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the decrease in CM reports made to CPS in urban counties was more pronounced than in rural counties.

Child maltreatment reporting during the initial weeks of COVID-19 in the US: Findings from NCANDS.

Background: After the national COVID-19 emergency declaration in the U.S. in March 2020, child welfare agencies observed large reductions in maltreatment reporting.

Racial/ethnic and gender disparities in child protection decision-making: What role do stereotypes play?

Background: A wide range of studies have revealed racial/ethnic and gender disparities in child protection decision-making.

Objective: This study investigated whether disparities are mediated by stereotypes that professionals may hold, by applying the Stereotype Content Model (SCM) which suggests that stereotypes are formed by perceptions of sociability, morality, and competence.

Participants And Setting: 258 professionals (133 current staff and 125 trainees) from Colorado participated in the study.

Differential Response and the Reduction of Child Maltreatment and Foster Care Services Utilization in the U.S. From 2004 to 2017.

By 2014, the majority of U.S. states had implemented differential response (DR), a system policy that seeks to serve families of low-to moderate-risk for child maltreatment through family engagement, diversion from formal child protective services investigations, and service provision.

Understanding the overrepresentation of Black children in Ontario's child welfare system: Perspectives from child welfare workers and community service providers.

Background: The overrepresentation of Black children in the child welfare system is a social problem that has received longstanding attention in the United States, but has recently received increasing attention in Canada.

Objective: This qualitative study explores the findings of two quantitative studies (Antwi-Boasiako et al., 2020, 2021) in order to interpret them through the perspectives of child welfare workers and community service providers.

Addressing the overrepresentation of Black children in Ontario's child welfare system: insights from child welfare workers and community service providers.

Background: The overrepresentation Black children experience in the child welfare system is well documented in the United States, but such studies are now emerging in Canada. In Ontario, there are few studies that address this issue concerning Black families.

Objective: This study is to explore the insights of child welfare workers and community service providers on how to potentially address Black children's overrepresentation in Ontario's child welfare system.

What Proportion of Foster Care Children Do Not Have Child Protective Services Reports? A Preliminary Look.

It is perhaps surprising that we lack complete national information about why children enter foster care. While the annual Adoption and Foster Care Analysis Reporting System (AFCARS) report is informative, it leaves many questions unanswered, particularly "how many children enter foster care by means other than Child Protective Services (CPS) reports?" Drawing from a unique new integrated dataset, we examined foster care data (AFCARS) and CPS report data (National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System Child File). The linked dataset included 210,062 children with foster care placements in 2017 and no placements in the prior 5 years.

Understanding factors associated with barefoot social workers' decision making in assessing and reporting child physical abuse in China.

Background: Mandatory reporting is new in China, and barefoot social workers are responsible for detecting and reporting child maltreatment.

Objective: Guided by the decision-making ecology, this study examined factors associated with barefoot social workers' decision making in assessing and reporting child physical abuse in China.

Participants And Settings: Cross-sectional data were collected from barefoot social workers (N = 1489) in a metropolitan city in Southern China.

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Child Protection System Referrals and Responses in Colorado, USA.

Although the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has amplified risk factors known to increase children's vulnerability to abuse and neglect, emerging evidence suggests declines in maltreatment reporting and responding following COVID-19 social distancing protocols in the United States. Using statewide administrative data, this study builds on the current state of knowledge to better understand the volume of child protection system (CPS) referrals and responses in Colorado, USA before and during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic and to determine whether there were differences in referral and response rates by case characteristics. Results indicated an overall decline in referrals and responses during COVID-19 when compared to the previous year.

Recurrent involvement with the Quebec child protection system for reasons of neglect: A longitudinal clinical population study.

Unlabelled: Studies in several jurisdictions have found that families become recurrently involved with child protection systems most frequently for reasons of neglect. Child protection involvement for reasons of neglect is shown to correlate with various socioeconomic vulnerabilities.

Objective: This study, the largest of its kind in Canada, examines when and for whom recurring conditions of neglect were most likely to occur for all children involved with child protection in the province of Quebec over a span of fifteen years.

Major findings from the Ontario Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect 2018.

Background: The Ontario Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect (OIS) is the only source of province-wide statistics on families investigated by child welfare.

Objective: This paper presents key findings from the 2018 cycle of the OIS (OIS-2018) and highlights select policy and practice implications of these findings.

Participants And Settings: The OIS-2018 captured information directly from investigating child protection workers about children and families who were the subject of a child protection investigation sampled for inclusion in the study.

Child maltreatment data: A summary of progress, prospects and challenges.

Background: In 1996, the ISPCAN Working Group on Child Maltreatment Data (ISPCAN-WGCMD) was established to provide an international forum in which individuals, who deal with child maltreatment data in their respective professional roles, can share concerns and solutions.

Objective: This commentary describes some of the key features and the status of child maltreatment related data collection addressed by the ISPCAN-WGCMD.

Methods: Different types of data collection methods including self-report, sentinel, and administrative data designs are described as well as how they address different needs for information to help understand child maltreatment and systems of prevention and intervention.

Differences and disparities over time: Black and White families investigated by Ontario's child welfare system.

Background: Black-White disparities in child welfare involvement have been well-documented in the United States, but there is a significant knowledge gap in Ontario about how and when these disparities emerge.

Objective: This paper compares incidence data on Black and White families investigated by Ontario's child welfare system over a 20-year period.

Methods: Data from the first five cycles of the Ontario Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect (OIS) (1993-2013) were used to examine trends in child maltreatment investigations involving Black and White families.

Risk factors for child abuse, neglect and exposure to intimate partner violence in early childhood: Findings in a representative cross-sectional sample in Germany.

Background: The KiD 0-3 national main study is a cross-sectional study on adversity in early childhood and parental access to support services, conducted as part of a long-term policy program for early intervention services in Germany.

Objective: To identify risk factors for child abuse, neglect and exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV) and investigate if parental use of early intervention programs or contact to child welfare services was associated with reported child maltreatment.

Participants And Setting: 8063 families with infants and toddlers participated in the survey.

The effects of migrant background and parent gender on child protection decision-making: An intersectional analysis.

Background: Disparities in decision-making are a recognized concern within child protection systems and imply that marginalized groups are being treated unequally compared to majoritized groups. Previous studies reported that both ethnicity and the gender of the parent that maltreated the child seem associated with an increased likelihood that child protection agencies provide services after an investigation or that children are placed out of their homes.

Objective: We investigated whether migration background and the gender of the parent who maltreated the child seem associated with the decision whether a case was opened for continuing services.

Differential Response and Children Re-Reported to Child Protective Services: County Data From the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS).

Child protection systems that implement differential response (DR) systems screen to route referrals to an investigation response (IR) or alternative response (AR). AR responses emphasize family engagement, assessment of family needs, and service linkage. Usually, AR state-level policy does not require child welfare staff to make a maltreatment determination.

A changing child welfare workforce: What worker characteristics are valued in child welfare?

A child welfare system is responsible for making difficult decisions. Child welfare workers are charged with assessing and determining when a child is in need of protection, including when it is necessary to intervene on behalf of children when their caregivers' abilities and/or situation is deemed to put them at risk of abuse or neglect. Although the child welfare workforce in Ontario attended to an estimated 125,281 child maltreatment investigations in 2013, little is known about the skills, education, and experiences of these investigating workers.

Ongoing child welfare services: Understanding the relationship of worker and organizational characteristics to service provision.

Ongoing child welfare services are put in place after completion of the initial maltreatment investigation when there is a perceived need to mitigate the risk of future harm. The knowledge of how clinical, worker, and organizational characteristics interact with this decision to provide ongoing child welfare services is not well integrated in the research literature. Using secondary data from the Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect-2008, this study's primary objective is to understand the relationship of clinical, worker, and organizational characteristics to the decision to transfer a case to ongoing child welfare services and their relative contribution to the transfer decision in Canada.

The potential use of social media and other internet-related data and communications for child maltreatment surveillance and epidemiological research: Scoping review and recommendations.

Collecting child maltreatment data is a complicated undertaking for many reasons. As a result, there is an interest by child maltreatment researchers to develop methodologies that allow for the triangulation of data sources. To better understand how social media and internet-based technologies could contribute to these approaches, we conducted a scoping review to provide an overview of social media and internet-based methodologies for health research, to report results of evaluation and validation research on these methods, and to highlight studies with potential relevance to child maltreatment research and surveillance.

Child welfare organizations: Do specialization and service integration impact placement decisions?

The objective of this study was to contribute to the understanding of the child welfare organization by testing the hypothesis that the characteristics of organizations influence decisions made by child protection staff for vulnerable children. The influence of two aspects of organizational structure on the decision to place a child in out-of-home care were examined: service integration and worker specialization. A theoretical framework that integrated the Decision-Making Ecology Framework (Baumann et al.

Effectiveness of family group conferencing in preventing repeat referrals to child protective services and out-of-home placements.

Rigorous research on the efficacy of family group conferencing is rare. This randomized control trial study used an intent-to-treat approach to examine whether a referral to a family group conference (FGC) was associated with re-referrals, substantiated re-referrals, or out-of-home placements among child welfare-involved families receiving in-home services. We found no significant associations between treatment and control group assignment and the three outcomes for the sample as a whole.

Adverse childhood experiences and association with health, mental health, and risky behavior in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Background: The aim of this study is to determine if ACEs impact the health and risk behavior burden among Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) adults.

Methods: In 2013, a cross-sectional study was conducted across KSA to identify the retrospective prevalence of ACEs and their association with high risk behaviors and chronic diseases. Surveys from 10,156 adults in all 13 Saudi regions were obtained using an Arabic version of the WHO ACE-IQ (KSA ACE-IQ).

The impact of drugs, infants, single mothers, and relatives on reunification: A Decision-Making Ecology approach.

Using a Decision-Making Ecology (DME) approach and proportional hazards models, the study isolated four case factor profiles that interacted strongly with race and resulted in disparate reunification outcomes for African American children compared with Anglos. The four interrelated factors were drug involvement, a solo infant case, single mothers, and relative placements. A cohort of 21,763 children from the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services who were placed for the first time in care, who were under 13 and either Anglo or African American were followed for 20 months or more post entry into care.

Exploring alternate specifications to explain agency-level effects in placement decisions regarding Aboriginal children: Further analysis of the Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect Part C.

A series of papers using data from the Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect (CIS) explored the influence of clinical and organizational characteristics on the decision to place Aboriginal children in out-of-home placements at the conclusion of child maltreatment investigations. The purpose of this paper is to further explore a consistent finding of the previous analyses: the proportion of investigations involving Aboriginal children at a child welfare agency is associated with placement for all children in that agency. CIS-2008 data were used in the analysis, which allowed for inclusion of previously unavailable organizational and contextual variables.