Jonson-Reid, M., Drake, B., & Kohl, P.L. (2009). Is the overrepresentation of the poor in child welfare caseloads due to bias or need? Children and Youth Services Review, 31(3), 422–427.
Poor children are significantly overrepresented on child welfare caseloads. The Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect (Trocmé, Fallon, et. al, 2005)1, for instance, found that nearly a quarter (24%) of maltreated children lived in families dependent on social assistance, and another 19% lived in families where the primary source of income was seasonal or part-time work or no known source of income. While this overrepresentation is certainly in part explained by the fact that poverty is a risk factor for maltreatment, some critics raise concern that poor families are also more likely to be reported because they are scrutinized more closely.
Jonson-Reid, Drake and Kohl test the class bias hypothesis using longitudinal data drawn from child welfare services as well as census, health, and corrections from a Midwestern city in the United States. They compare poor children with no child maltreatment reports, poor children with investigated child maltreatment reports, and non-poor children with investigated child maltreatment reports. Compared to non-poor children reported to child welfare, poor reported children generally presented a higher risk profile, more severe forms of maltreatment and higher rates of recidivism (64% vs. 33%). In other words there appears to be an inverse class bias whereby poor families must display higher levels of difficulties before child welfare services become involved.
Comparing poor non-reported children to poor reported children, the study finds that the reported children and their families presented a much higher risk profile; for example the reported children’s parents were four times more likely to have a documented mental health problem. These findings indicate that poor families are more likely to be reported for child maltreatment because of the array of stressors and risk factors that they face rather than because of higher levels of scrutiny or class bias. The authors aptly conclude that rather “than see child welfare as an active force engaging families without need, an alternative is to view the reporting system as a means to identify higher risk families, and to channel services to these families and the areas in which they live” (p. 427).
1Trocmé, N., Fallon, B., MacLaurin, B., Daciuk, J., Felstiner, C., Black, T., et al. (2005). Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect – 2003. Ottawa, ON: Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada, 148 pages.
This study tracked over 7,000 children and their families using administrative data collected from an impressive array of services: child welfare, mental health, emergency room and hospital records, income maintenance, juvenile corrections and court record, and special education eligibility records. Tract-level census data was used to calculate neighbourhood income rates. Analyses were conducted in two waves: the three groups were first compared at the bivariate level (ANOVA and chi-square), then logistic regression was used to examine to what extent the bivariate associations held with multivariate controls. This is an exceptionally rich dataset that allowed for an innovative comparison of systems’ responses to families living in poverty compared to high-risk non-poor families.