Home, but Left Alone: Time at Home and Child Abuse and Neglect During COVID-19.

We use high-frequency mobile phone movement data and quick-release administrative data from Georgia to examine how time at home during the COVID-19 pandemic is related to child maltreatment referrals. Findings show that referrals plummeted by 58% relative to previous years, driven by fewer referrals from education personnel. After this initial decline, however, each 15 minutes at home was associated with an increase in referrals of material neglect by 3.5% and supervisory neglect by 1%. Our results describe how children have fared during the initial wave of the pandemic, and the results have long-term implications for child development and well-being.

The neglected ones: Time at home during COVID-19 and child maltreatment.

The early months of the COVID-19 pandemic led to extreme social isolation, precarious employment and job loss, working from home while tending to children, and limited access to public services. The confluence of these factors likely affects child health and well-being. We combine early release child maltreatment reports in Indiana with unique and newly available mobile phone movement data to better understand the relationship between staying at home intensively during the COVID-19 pandemic and child maltreatment. Our findings indicate that the prolonged stays at home promoted by the early public health response to COVID-19 resulted in reductions in child maltreatment reports overall and substantiated reports of maltreatment. However, relative to areas that stayed home less, children in areas that stayed home more were more likely to be both reported for and a confirmed victim of maltreatment, particularly neglect. These areas have historically been socioeconomically advantaged and experienced lower rates of maltreatment. We only observe increases in confirmed child maltreatment in metropolitan counties, suggesting that the effects of staying home on child maltreatment may reflect both the differential risk of leaving home and access to services in metropolitan-rather than non-metropolitan-counties. Staying at home has been challenging for many families. Families likely need assistance as the pandemic persists, evolves, and when it ends.

Assessment of the validity of the AUDIT factor structure in parents involved with child protective services.

Background: Identification of hazardous alcohol use is a critical step in connecting individuals to treatment and child protective services (CPS) is a treatment entry-point for parents if hazardous use is identified. The Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) is a common screening tool in this setting. However, prior research identifies one to three factors in the AUDIT, revealing uncertainty in the perception and/or impact of alcohol use. Determining the factor structure of the AUDIT for CPS-involved parents is important for its relevance and use in CPS. Objectives: This analysis examines the type and number of factors present in a sample of parents involved with CPS. Methods: Using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), this study compares the one-, two-, and three-factor structures of the AUDIT in a large sample of CPS-involved parents (N = 4009, 90.8% female, 9.2% male) and a sub-sample who endorsed alcohol use (N = 1950). This analysis used data from Waves I and II of the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being II. Results: In the main sample, the two-factor (RMSEA = .044, 90% CI: 0.039-0.048; CFI = 0.967; TLI = 0.956) and three-factor (RMSEA = .045, 90% CI: 0.041-0.050; CFI = 0.966; TLI = 0.952) fit better than the single factor model (RMSEA = .072, 90% CI: 0.067-0.076; CFI = 0.908; TLI = 0.881). In the three-factor model two of the factors had a correlation of 0.99; parsimonious models are usually preferable. Sub-sample results were similar. Conclusions: The two-factor AUDIT is appropriate for screening CPS-involved parents. Screening with the AUDIT should improve early identification and referral to treatment for CPS-involved parents with hazardous alcohol use.

Harsh physical punishment as a mediator between income, re-reports and out-of-home placement in a child protective services-involved population.

Poverty is consistently associated with a higher risk of experiencing child maltreatment, and children from poor families are the majority of children involved in child protective services (CPS). However, the mediators in the relationship from income to CPS involvement are not entirely understood. Using theoretically-informed mediating path models and data from the second National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW II), this study tests the role of harsh physical punishment as a mediator between family income and CPS involvement. CPS involvement was measured by subsequent report of maltreatment and removal to out-of-home care. The direct paths from income to re-report and to removal were significant; with higher income associated with lower risk of report and removal. Lower income was significantly associated with higher rates of harsh physical punishment. However, harsh punishment did not mediate the relationship between income and the outcomes. These results suggest that even within a population primarily comprised of low-income families, lower income is a risk for subsequent reports and removals as well as a risk for higher rates of harsh physical punishment. However, in this sample harsh physical punishment is not the mechanism that results in higher subsequent-reports or removal rates.

Paid Family Leave: An Upstream Intervention to Prevent Family Violence.

Purpose: Family violence imposes tremendous costs on victims and society. Rarely are policies focused on the primary prevention of family violence. Given the prevalence of family violence-including child maltreatment and intimate partner violence (IPV)-during the perinatal period, policies targeting this vulnerable time period may be successful in primary prevention. Paid family leave (PFL) programs provide income-replacement during particularly stressful family events, such as the birth of a child. Method: In this commentary, we describe the conceptual links between PFL, child maltreatment, and IPV, suggesting that PFL may be a promising strategy for the primary prevention of child maltreatment and IPV. Results: There is emerging evidence that policies targeting the early years of life may reduce child maltreatment and IPV. Conclusion: Addressing the concrete and economic challenges faced by caregivers is one promising strategy for the prevention of family violence.

Childcare Subsidy Employment and Copayment Requirements and Child Maltreatment.

Economic support programs for low-income families may play an important role in preventing child abuse and neglect. In the United States, childcare subsidies are provided to low-income families who meet certain requirements to offset the high cost of childcare. States have flexibility in setting many policies related to the provision of childcare subsidies, which results in a great deal of variation in how the programs operate between states. One policy dimension on which states vary is the number of employment hours required to receive childcare subsidies. A small body of work has begun to investigate the ways in which these state policy variations might relate to child maltreatment. Using 11 years of administrative data from the United States, the current study sought to estimate the relationship between two sources of variation in childcare subsidy policies: employment requirements and copayment size; and child neglect, physical abuse, and emotional abuse substantiations. The study found a nuanced relationship between required employment and neglect substantiations. Specifically, requiring some level of work was not associated with neglect substantiations, but requiring 30 hours of employment was associated with higher rates. The study did not find a relationship between copayment size and maltreatment substantiations.

Childcare Subsidy Enrollment Income Generosity and Child Maltreatment.

In the United States, childcare subsidies are available to low-income working parents to assist with the cost of childcare. The subsidies are provided as block grants to states, which allows for a great deal of flexibility in the specific policies guiding their distribution. Prior research has found a protective link between childcare subsidies and child maltreatment, but the variations in policies have been much less explored. The current study used longitudinal administrative child welfare data from 10 years (2009-2019) linked with state policies regarding the income eligibility requirements of states to examine the impact of these policies on child abuse and neglect among young children (0-5); early school-age children (6-12), and older children (13-17). Using multiple regression and controlling for state demographic characteristics, the study found that more generous policies surrounding income eligibility were related to lower rates of child abuse and neglect investigations at the state level.

That Which is Essential has been Made Invisible: The Need to Bring a Structural Risk Perspective to Reduce Racial Disproportionality in Child Welfare.

The racial and ethnic disproportionality and disparity in the child protective system (CPS) has been a concern for decades. Structural factors strongly influence engagement with the child welfare system and families experiencing poverty or financial hardship are at a heightened risk. The economic factors influencing child welfare involvement are further complicated by structural racism which has resulted in a greater prevalence of poverty and financial hardship for families who are Black, Native American or Alaska Native (Indigenous), or and Latino/Hispanic (Latino) and their communities. The multiple decision points within CPS are an opportunity to reify or correct for bias in child welfare outcomes. One major effort to eliminate racial disparities and disproportionalities has been to enact standardized decision-making procedures that aim to control for implicit or explicit bias in CPS. The Structured Decision-Making Model's (SDM) actuarial-based risk assessment (RA) is the gold-standard of these efforts. In this conceptual article, we ask (1) How are structural factors accounted for in assessment of risk within CPS? and (2) What are the consequences when structural factors are left out of risk assessments procedures? We posit that the exclusion of race, ethnicity, and economic factors from the RA has inflated the importance of variables that become proxies for these factors, resulting in inaccurate assessments of risk. The construction of this tool reflects how structural racism has been overlooked as an important cause of disproportionality in CPS, with interventions then focused on individual workers and cases, rather than the system at large. We suggest a new framework for thinking about risk, the structural risk perspective, and call for a revisioning of assessment of risk within child welfare that acknowledges the social determinants of CPS involvement.

Measuring self-reported polyvictimization in foster youth research: A systematic review.

BACKGROUND: Youth who are or have been in foster care (foster youth) are at higher risk for adverse outcomes in early adulthood. As the importance and complexity of victimization experiences, including types, timing, and perpetrators, is better understood it is unclear whether or to what extent the research on foster youth assesses polyvictimization. Because many types of victimization, such as community violence, are under-reported or absent in the administrative data typically used for research with foster care populations, self-reports of victimization experiences are necessary to comprehensively assess polyvictimization. Polyvictimization places youth at increased risk for adverse outcomes, and yet is not widely measured in the foster youth population. This is likely in part due to the wide-use of administrative reports to assess maltreatment among research on foster youth which does not capture a full range of victimization experiences. OBJECTIVE: The aim of the present study was to systematically review and evaluate the measurement of self-reported polyvictimization with foster youth samples. METHODS: A search in Academic Search Premier, MEDLINE, PsycARTICLES, Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection, Social Work Abstracts, SociINDEX, and Scopus was conducted. Articles included peer-reviewed, quantitative research studies that measured self-reported victimization (including violence exposure and/or maltreatment) with foster youth samples between 1997-2017. In total, 1887 studies were identified and reviewed by two raters and of those 18 met the study criteria. RESULTS: Almost all of the included studies (n = 16) measured multiple types of victimization through self-report. The most common types of victimization measured were sexual abuse (n = 15), physical abuse (n = 14), and physical neglect (n = 11). Half of studies (n = 9) measured at least one non-maltreatment victimization experience, such as community violence exposure and/or dating violence. However, included studies rarely measured other aspects of victimization, such as timing of exposure (e.g., pre or during foster care), which research has identified as relevant to outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first systematic review to assess the measurement of self-reported polyvictimization in research with current or former foster youth. Given the limited comprehensive assessment of victimization, these findings support strong recommendations for developing or adapting polyvictimization measures specifically for foster youth so that the measures include child welfare-specific factors such as the timing and perpetration of victimization experiences.

Child Welfare Involved Parents and Pathways Triple P: Perceptions of Program Acceptability and Appropriateness.

Nearly half of children in the child welfare system have clinically significant behavior problems and are at risk of developing disruptive behavioral disorders. Yet, behavioral parent training interventions, which are the most effective way to treat these problems, are rarely provided to child welfare involved families. As a result, little is known about the acceptability and appropriateness of these parent training interventions with these families. This qualitative study explored implementation outcomes of an evidenced-based parenting intervention, Pathways Triple P, with families in the child welfare system. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with parents investigated for child maltreatment (n=47); following participation in the Pathways Triple P. Parents were asked about their perceptions of acceptability (program satisfaction) and appropriateness (program fit). Despite the complicated and often chaotic lives common among this vulnerable population, study findings suggest that most parents found the intervention to be useful and relevant. Pathways Triple P's content, structure and materials for parents were key aspects of acceptability and appropriateness. Barriers to participation were also identified separately for parents who did not receive the full dosage of the intervention. Study findings indicate that Pathways Triple P is a promising strategy to improve behavioral health outcomes for maltreated children and increase positive parenting behaviors for child welfare involved parents.