Child Maltreatment Research, Policy, and Practice for the Next Decade Workshop Summary (2012) / Chapter Skim
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4 Social Trends and Child Maltreatment Trends
4 Social Trends and Child Maltreatment Trends
Pages 25-42
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From page 25... ...
Data on child maltreatment also can be compared with data on broad social trends to probe the causes and consequences of child abuse and neglect. This chapter examines the broad relationships between social trends and child maltreatment trends, while the next chapter looks at more specific causes and consequences.
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From page 26... ...
Nevertheless, it is important to monitor and probe social trends to explore their possible effects on child maltreatment, said Christina Paxson, dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of International and Public Affairs and the Hughes Rogers Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University. Understanding these trends can indicate what might happen in the future as social and economic influences continue to change and can shape the research agenda to anticipate these changes.
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From page 27... ...
One way to learn more about the effects of poverty on child maltreatment would be to look at the uneven effects of the recession on different parts of the United States. "This will be a good opportunity to look at how economic factors influence maltreatment." Health and Health Care The fraction of poor children without health insurance has been dropping in recent years -- from 23 percent of children below 200 percent of the poverty line in 1997 to 12 percent in 2009 -- even as the percentage of children without health insurance above this income level has remained fairly stable (at about 5 percent)
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From page 28... ...
The constrained fiscal outlook also calls for the development of cost-effective primary prevention models, sophisticated tools to assess the risk for secondary maltreatment (maltreatment in addition to another kind of trauma identified as the primary descriptor for the situation, e.g., domestic violence) , and better methods for tracking and monitoring high-risk families.
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From page 29... ...
They report on fatalities, perpetrators of maltreatment, and services the cases have received. NCANDS classifies maltreatment into six categories: physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, medical neglect, psychological maltreatment, and other.
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From page 30... ...
" These reports are then evaluated in the terms of the standardized definitions that the NIS applies to classify maltreatment events, injuries, and circumstances. The maltreatment classification has eight overarching categories: physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, physical neglect, educational neglect, emotional neglect, other maltreatment, and maltreatment
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From page 31... ...
In addition, the NIS provides detailed information about CPS investigation rates by maltreatment type and recognition source, CPS agency structure and practices related to investigation rates, CPS screening policies related to uninvestigated children, and sentinel training and reporting of maltreatment. Other Data Sources The Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS)
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From page 32... ...
A major problem is that the findings from these data sources are not being well disseminated, Sedlak stated. States hardly use, publicize, or even know about their own NCANDS data trends.
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From page 33... ...
For example, the National Crime Victimization Survey interviews individuals ages 12 and older about their criminal victimization experiences every 6 months, repeating these interviews for 3 years. Adding proxy interviews on victimization of younger children could provide victimization data for all ages.
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From page 34... ...
CHANGES IN RATES OF REPORTED CHILD ABUSE AND NEGLECT Lisa Jones, a research associate professor of psychology at the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center, described one of the more notable -- and contentious -- data points discussed at the workshop. Evidence for a Decline in Physical and Sexual Abuse NCANDS data indicate a steady decline in physical abuse and sexual abuse over the past two decades (Figure 3)
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From page 35... ...
Other data sources such as the NIS support the trends seen in NCANDS data. Between NIS-3 in 1993 and NIS-4 in 2005, sexual abuse was down 44 percent and physical abuse was down 23 percent, even though the sentinel data in the NIS come from a different source than the NCANDS data.
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From page 36... ...
The greatest declines occurred in the 1990s, when the United States was going through a relatively positive economic phase, with a slower decline in the past decade. However, throughout the past decade, and even in the recent recession, rates of physical abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect have continued to fall.
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From page 37... ...
Future Opportunities to Use Data Jones urged that the data available today be used more effectively. NCANDS and NIS data provide critical public health information on child maltreatment trends, but this information is being underused.
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From page 38... ...
Child abuse codes in that database are another way of examining the occurrence of serious injuries to children due to abuse. According to those data, he added, serious injuries of hospitalized children did not decline from 1997 to 2009, in contrast to the NCANDS data.
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From page 39... ...
Estimates of prevalence among low-income populations were even higher. In the Cleveland area, life-table estimates indicated that 49 percent of African American children and 21 percent of white children would be subjects of reports of alleged child abuse or neglect by their tenth birthday (Sabol et al., 2004)
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From page 40... ...
"My concern in expanding the system at this point is that we are already underresourced and if we move it to a broader level, we ought to be thinking about how we also expand those resources." Measurement Issues Some types of maltreatment classifications are extremely useful, Jonson-Reid observed. Unmet medical needs or the occurrence of sexual abuse demand responses.
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From page 41... ...
In general, most child welfare assessments are linked to safety and permanence and less so to well-being. Few child welfare systems have universal screening for other indicators of need such as a young child's developmental status or the presence of a mental health disorder.
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From page 42... ...
42 CHILD MALTREATMENT RESEARCH, POLICY, AND PRACTICE ous data. In addition, household-level data are needed to go beyond the population data from NCANDS and NIS.
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