Multiple trajectories of maltreatment re-reports after early report

This study examined child maltreatment re-report trajectories for high-risk children, age 4 to 12 who were first reported to child protection services for maltreatment prior to age four. The goal of this study was twofold; first, the authors wished to identify subgroups of children according to their re-report trajectories based on when and how frequent re-reports were made; secondly, they wanted to identify which characteristics (assessed at baseline, age four) predicted the different re-reporting trajectories identified through the first objective.

Using a growth mixture model (GMM), the authors have classified 501 children from the Consortium for Longitudinal Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect (LONGSCAN) into four different groups based on re-report trajectories:  

Class 1: No re-reports (n=165; 33%);
Class 2: Continuous re-reports (n=52; 10%);
Class 3: Intermittent re-reports (n=184; 37%);
Class 4: Early re-reports – before 8 years old only (n=100; 20%).

These results show that two-thirds of children were re-reported during the 8-year follow-up period, meaning when they were between 4 and 12 years old. Another important finding is that, overall, there was a declining re-report rate over time, with more children re-reported when between the ages of 4 and 6 years than when between 10 and 12 years.

Multinomial logistic regressions were subsequently used to examine the relationship between trajectory class membership and a set of predictors based on placement type, early maltreatment, caregiver, and home characteristics assessed at age four, and control variables (drawn from the LONGSCAN).  

Several of the factors assessed at age four were associated with membership in a class with more re-reports, such as living with biological/stepparent at age 4, caregiver depression and lack of social support, older caregiver, and number of children in the home. In addition, some of these factors seem to distinguish early re-reports from ongoing, chronic re-reports. Children in the continuous re-report group were more likely than children in the early and no re-report groups to have been reported for physical abuse and to live with a caregiver abusing alcohol, while these characteristics do not distinguish children from the early and the no re-reports groups. These findings suggest that physical abuse and caregiver alcohol abuse may be linked to ongoing re-reporting of child maltreatment. Family poverty was associated with membership in any of the 3 classes with re-reports when compared to the no re-report class, but it did not distinguish children across the 3 re-report classes, indicating that poverty seems to be an overall predictor of re-report, unable to distinguish early from chronic re-reports.

These findings highlight that an overall decline in rates of re-reports over time may mask the existence of subgroups of children who, in fact, experience persistent re-reports through time, such as the children in the continuous and intermittent re-report classes in this study. While these findings are not generalizable to the overall child protection services (CPS) population because of the early report and high-risk criteria that determined inclusion in this study, they remain extremely important to consider from a clinical perspective. These findings pertain to an understudied group of high-risk children (reported in early childhood) which child protection professionals are likely to interact and intervene with and highlight the fact that the risk for re-report appears to remain for a longer period (8 to 12 years after the 1st report) than what has been previously found.