Brett Drake

Social Determinant of Health (SDoH) Indices, such as the Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) or the Area Deprivation Index (ADI), are increasingly used in child maltreatment research either to explore the degree which SDoH is associated with maltreatment or as a control variable to more accurately understand other associations of interest. To date, however, there have been no published explorations of which SDoH measures are most predictive of child maltreatment outcomes. This paper compares a range of publicly available SDoH measures in terms of their ability to explain variability in rates in National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) data. We examine correlations between SDoH measures and a range of child welfare outcomes (report rate, substantiation rate, foster care rate) as well as types of maltreatment reports (e.g. neglect, physical, sexual). We find some SDoH measures and median household income have strong correlations with NCANDS data (e.g. the ADI) while others (e.g. the BRIC) are much weaker. Associations tend to be consistent across both outcomes and maltreatment types. These associations were stronger when within-state clustering was applied. Our findings highlight the importance of accounting for state-level clustering and evaluating the predictive performance of SDoH indices when using NCANDS data.

Adolescents experience elevated reentry rates into child welfare-supervised out-of-home care following reunification. Limited research has explored the pathways contributing to these outcomes and not accounted for the distinct reasons youth enter care. This study uses the Report and Placement Integrated Data Set, created by merging individual-level records from NCANDS and AFCARS across 51 states, to examine reunification outcomes for 16,261 youth who experienced their first foster care episode and were reunified in 2016 between ages 13 and 17. Most youth were initially removed following a child maltreatment report (CMR) (86.7%), and nearly half (46.2%) had a subsequent report post-reunification. Approximately 12.9% reentered out-of-home care, with just 36.1% of those having a CMR upon reentry. Further analysis revealed significant differences in removal reasons and placement types based on the presence of a CMR. The finding that reentry is so common without CMRs is new. Lower reentry rates for reunifications from kinship placements, as well as repeat maltreatment (without reentry), suggest that future research look for protective characteristics of these placements that might be brought to non-kinship placements. The findings underscore the need for improved data collection about child maltreatment, behavioral health, and trial home visits to better understand and reduce reentry.

This study explores the overlap of domestic violence (DV) and child maltreatment (CM). We assessed the face validity of the DV indicator in the NCANDS Child File, a national record of children investigated by Child Protective Services (CPS). In the FY 2016 NCANDS data, we found that only 26 states met a threshold of 5% of investigated children including an indication of DV. Using these states, we found that 12.5% of children had reports with noted DV. These children were younger, from larger families, and lived in lower-income counties than children without indicated DV. They were also over twice as likely to be in a report originating from law enforcement. Their rates for substantiation (41.21% vs 15.66%) and foster care placement (8.29% vs 3.77%) were more than twice as high as children without DV concerns. The re-report rate (48.02% vs. 45.46%) was slightly higher for those with indicated DV. This study highlights the importance of assessing face validity when using NCANDS data for research and underscores the need for improved DV data collection in CPS systems, thereby strengthening collaboration between DV and CPS agencies.