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Child protective services (CPS) agencies have established two stages for responding to child abuse and neglect allegations. The first is the receipt of a referral from a professional or another person in the community. A referral is the initial notification to CPS alleging abuse or neglect of one or more children. Agency hotline or intake units screen out some referrals as not being appropriate for further investigation or assessment. The second stage is the investigation or assessment of the screened-in referral, which is called a report.
When an allegation reaches the second stage and is considered a report, the agency either initiates an investigation or pursues an alternative response. The purpose of an investigation is to determine if the child was maltreated—or is at risk of maltreatment—and to establish the appropriate intervention. Alternative responses emphasize an assessment of the family's needs and the prevention of future maltreatment, rather than making a formal determination of maltreatment.1 Regardless of which type of response the agency uses for a specific report, it must decide if further action is necessary to protect the child. During Federal fiscal year (FFY) 2006:
This chapter presents statistics regarding referrals, reports, and investigations or assessments. National estimates for FFY 2006 are based on the child populations for the 50 States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.
The process of determining whether a referral meets a State's standard for an investigation or assessment is known as screening. Screening in a referral means that an allegation of child abuse or neglect met the State's standard for investigation or assessment and the referral reaches the second stage and is called a report. Screening out a referral means that the allegation did not meet the State's standard for an investigation or assessment. Reasons for screening out a referral may include the following: The referral did not concern child abuse or neglect; it did not contain enough information to enable an investigation or assessment to occur; the children in the referral were the responsibility of another agency or jurisdiction, e.g., a military installation or a tribe; or the alleged victim was older than 18 years.
During FFY 2006, an estimated 3.3 million referrals, including approximately 6.0 million children, were made to CPS agencies. The national rate was 43.7 referrals per 1,000 children for FFY 2006 compared with 43.9 referrals per 1,000 children for FFY 2005.2, 3
During FFY 2006, CPS agencies screened in 61.7 percent of referrals and screened out 38.3 percent. These results were similar to FFY 2005 data, which indicated 62.1 percent were screened in and 37.9 percent were screened out.
NCANDS collects case-level information for all reports that received a disposition or finding within the year. The information includes the report source, the number of children in the investigation, and the disposition of the report.
Professionals submitted more than one-half (56.3%) of the reports (figure 2-1). The term professional indicates that the person encountered the alleged victim as part of the report source's occupation. State laws require most professionals to notify CPS agencies of suspected maltreatment. The categories of professionals include teachers, legal staff or police officers, social services staff, medical staff, mental health workers, child daycare workers, and foster care providers. The three largest percentages of 2006 reports were from professionals—teachers (16.5%), lawyers or police officers (15.8%) and social services staff (10.0%).4
Nonprofessional sources submitted the remaining 43.7 percent of reports. These included parents, relatives, friends and neighbors, alleged victims, alleged perpetrators, anonymous callers, and "other" sources. The National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) uses the term "other" sources for those categories that States are not able to crosswalk to any of the NCANDS terms. "Other" sources may include clergy members, sports coaches, camp counselors, bystanders, volunteers, and foster siblings. The three largest groups of nonprofessional reporters were anonymous (8.2%), "other" (8.0%) and other relatives (7.8%).
CPS agencies assign a finding—also called a disposition—to a report after the circumstances are investigated and a determination is made as to whether the maltreatment occurred or the child is at risk of maltreatment. For FFY 2006, 1,907,264 investigations received a disposition. Each State establishes dispositions by policy and law.5 The major NCANDS disposition categories are described below.
Two alternative response categories are provided in NCANDS. The category that is most commonly used by States is alternative response nonvictim. Some States also use the alternative response victim category. During FFY 2006, 12 States used the alternative response nonvictim category and 2 States used the alternative response victim category.
For nearly 30 percent of investigations, at least one child was found to be a victim of maltreatment with one of the following dispositions—substantiated (25.2%), indicated (3.0%), or alternative response victim (0.4%) (figure 2-2). The remaining investigations led to a finding that children were not victims of maltreatment and the report received one of the following dispositions—unsubstantiated (60.4%), alternative response nonvictim (5.9%), "other" (3.2%), and closed with no finding (1.7%) or intentionally false (0.1%).6 When the 2002 investigation rates were compared to the FFY 2006 rates for each State, it was noted that by FFY 2006, the majority of States had increased their investigation rates.7 Two States were unable to submit the data needed for this analysis.
Report dispositions are based on the facts of the report as found by the CPS worker. The type of report source may be related to the disposition of a report because of the reporter's knowledge and credibility (figure 2-3). Case-level data submitted to NCANDS were used to examine this hypothesis.8 Based on more than 1.8 million reports, key findings are listed below.
Approximately two-thirds of substantiated or indicated reports were made by professional sources. Approximately 30 percent of substantiated and indicated reports were made by legal staff and police officers.
Nonprofessional report sources accounted for more than one-half of several categories of report disposition, indicating that children were not found to be victims of maltreatment. Those included alternative response nonvictim (58.8%), intentionally false (76.1%), or closed with no finding (54.5%).
Most States set requirements for beginning an investigation into a report of child abuse or neglect. While some States have a single timeframe for responding to reports, many States establish priorities based on the information received from the report source. Of the States that establish priorities, many specify a high-priority response as within 1 hour or within 24 hours. Lower priority responses range from 24 hours to 14 days.9
Because CPS agencies receive reports of varying degrees of urgency, average response times reflect the types of reports that are received, as well as the ability of workers to meet the time standards. The median response time from report to investigation was 66 hours or approximately 2–3 days. The average response time for these States was 86 hours or approximately 4 days.10 This is comparable to a median response time of 67 hours and an average response time of 89 hours for FFY 2005.
Given the large number and complexity of investigations and assessments that are conducted each year, there is an ongoing interest in the nature of the workforce that performs CPS functions. In most agencies, the screening and investigation are conducted by different groups of workers. In many rural and smaller agencies, one worker may perform both those functions, and other functions not mentioned here.
States that reported significant numbers of specialized workers for intake, screening, investigation, and assessment were used to estimate the average number of cases that were handled by CPS workers.11 The average number of completed investigations per investigation worker was 62 per year. (This compares with 67.5 in FFY 2005.) It is important to note that these calculations did not consider other activities of these workers and that some workers conducted more than one function. Also, each investigation could include more than one child. A more accurate calculation of workload would require a systematic estimation of work for a specific timeframe.12
The following pages contain the tables referenced in Chapter 2. Unless otherwise explained, a blank indicates that the State did not submit usable data. Specific information about State submissions can be found in appendix D. Additional information regarding methodologies that were used to create the tables is provided below.
Table 2-1
Table 2-6
Table 2-7
Footnotes
1 Shusterman, G. R., Fluke, J.D., Hollinshead, D.M., & Yuan, Y.T. (2005). Alternative responses to child maltreatment: Findings from NCANDS. (Protecting Children Vol. 20, No. 2 & 3). American Humane Association. back
2 Supporting data are provided in table 2-1, which is located at the end of this chapter. States provide aggregated data for the number of referrals. Based on data from 42 States, the national rate of referrals is 43.7 referrals per 1,000 children. A referral can include more than one child. Multiplying this rate by the national child population of 74,754,213 and dividing by 1,000 results in an estimated 3,266,759 referrals for FFY 2006. The estimate was then rounded to 3,300,000. Unless otherwise specified, all rates refer to children younger than 18 years in the national population. back
3 The number of children included in all referrals was calculated by multiplying the average number of children included in a referral (1.84) by the number of estimated referrals (3,266,759). This results in an estimated 6,010,836 children, which was rounded to the nearest 100,000. The average number of children included in a referral based on data from 51 States was calculated by dividing the number of children reported (3,511,590) by number of screened-in referrals (1,907,264). back
4 See table 2-2. back
5 During the preparation of the NCANDS data file, each State establishes a crosswalk between its disposition terms and the categories used by NCANDS. back
6 See table 2-3. "Other" dispositions include those categories that States were not able to crosswalk to NCANDS dispositions. back
7 See table 2-4. back
8 See table 2-5. back
9 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Administration for Children and Families/Children's Bureau and Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. National Study of Child Protective Services Systems and Reform Efforts: Review of State CPS Policy. (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2005). This document is also available at http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/cps-status03. back
10 See table 2-6. This table uses data from the Agency File. back
11 See table 2-7. The number of screening and intake workers (2,237) and the number of investigation workers (16,757) were reported by 33 States. back
12 A workload study in California estimated that an average monthly caseload for workers who exclusively conducted CPS Emergency Response investigations and no other services was 16.15 investigations per worker per month or approximately 194 per year. Each investigation could include more than one child. American Humane Association,
2000, SB 2030 Child Welfare Services Workload Study Report (Sacramento: California Department of Social Services). back
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