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Citation
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O'Dea N, Clough M, Beebe R, DiVietro S, Lapidus G, Grasso DJ. Child Abuse Negl. 2020; 108: e104688. |
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Abstract
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BACKGROUND: Child protective services (CPS) case records contain a vast amount of narrative information that is underutilized for estimating risk, conceptualizing family needs, and planning for services.
OBJECTIVE: The current study applied a novel method for quantifying family-level severity of maltreatment and non-maltreatment-related adversity types to narrative information reflecting a family's full CPS history.
PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING: Cases were randomly sampled (N = 100) from two regions of Connecticut that were referred over a specified 6-month period.
METHODS: De-identified data were extracted through comprehensive chart review of electronic and paper case records. The Yale-Vermont Adversity in Childhood Scale (Y-VACS; Holbrook et al., 2015) was used to quantify adversity severity across a range of intrafamilial and extrafamilial experiences.
RESULTS: Several family-level adversity severity ratings were associated with administrative data on allegations and investigative outcomes. Poly-victimization (β =.47, p <.001) and poly-deprivation (β =.25, p =.005) significantly predicted total allegation types and total substantiation types (β =.30, p =.002; β =.26, p =.008, respectively) across the case history. Poly-victimization significantly predicted the presence of a new allegation within 12 months of the index report, OR = 1.72, SE =.25, p =.027.
CONCLUSIONS: Findings support the feasibility of a novel method that uses narrative case record information to quantify severity of maltreatment and non-maltreatment-related adversity types, as well as cumulative measures of threat- and deprivation-based adversities at the family level. Implications for utilizing case record data to inform CPS intervention are discussed.
Language: en |