The influence of risk assessment and poverty on substantiation decisions for African American children in the child welfare system

African American children are highly overrepresented in the US child welfare system and have been so for at least thirty years. This overrepresentation of African American children in the system partly can be attributed to the disparities occurred along the child welfare pathway, from initial receipt of the report regarding the alleged maltreatment to the subsequent decisions on the case made by professionals. Each decision on each stage in the child welfare pathway can amplify or diminish the disparities imposed upon African American children. In order to unpack the exploratory factors behind these disparities, this study examined the role of race in conjunction with family income in the decision-making process of child welfare workers in Texas.

This study used substantiated reports of maltreatment from the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, the authors attempt to examine whether race is a determining factor when child welfare workers are deciding what interventions to mobilize. Results of the study indicated that when controlling for family income, age of the child, marital status of parents, age of the parent, State region, report source and allegation type, race was not a significant predictor for substantiation decisions by caseworkers. However, when controlling for all the above variables and adding caseworkers’ risk assessment into the model, results showed that African American were more likely (14.8% more likely) than White Americans to have substantiated reports. The authors suggested that child welfare workers had various “thresholds” for decision-making, which varied for children with different racial backgrounds. They also recommended caseworkers not to generalize risk resulting from poverty to all families.