Chapter 2
Reports
Child Maltreatment 2003
Each week, child protective services (CPS) agencies in the United States receive more than 50,000 referrals alleging that children have been abused or neglected. Some of these referrals lie outside the responsibility of the CPS agency and may be forwarded to other agencies. Other referrals do not have sufficient information to enable followup. For these and other reasons, including the workload of the agency, approximately one-third of referrals are screened out and do not receive further attention from CPS. The remaining two-thirds of referrals are screened in as reports to CPS agencies because they meet the States' policies for conducting an investigation or assessment.
Once a referral is accepted as a report alleging child abuse or neglect, the agency determines whether or not the child was maltreated or is at risk of maltreatment. The agency may initiate an investigation of the alleged incident, or it may pursue an alternative response, which has the goal of determining which services are the most appropriate.1 Regardless of what type of response an agency uses for a specific report, it must decide if further action is necessary to protect the child.
This chapter presents statistics on the screening of referrals and the investigation or assessment of reports. Of the referrals that were screened in, data are provided on the sources of reports, the CPS response time, and the dispositions or findings of investigations.
Screening of Referrals
During 2003, an estimated 2.9 million referrals, including 5.5 million children, were made to CPS agencies. The national rate was 39.1 referrals per 1,000 children for 2003 compared to 35.9 referrals per 1,000 children for 2002.2
CPS agencies screened in 67.9 percent of referrals and screened out 32.1 percent.3 These results were similar to last year's report, which indicated 67.1 percent were screened in and 32.9 percent were screened out.
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Report Sources
Professionals submitted more than one-half (56.8%) of the reports (figure 2-1). "Professional" indicates that the report source came into contact with the alleged victim as part of the reporter's occupation. State laws require most professionals to notify CPS agencies of suspected maltreatment. The categories of professionals include educators, legal and law enforcement personnel, social services personnel, medical personnel, mental health personnel, child daycare providers, and foster care providers. The three most common sources of reports in 2003 were from professionals—educational personnel (16.3%), legal or law enforcement personnel (16.0%), and social services personnel (11.6%).4
Nonprofessional report sources submitted the remaining 43.2 percent of reports. These included parents, other relatives, friends and neighbors, alleged victims, alleged perpetrators, anonymous callers, and "other" sources.5 Anonymous (9.1%), other relatives (8.1%), and "other" sources (7.7%) accounted for the largest groups of nonprofessional reporters.
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Response Time from Report to Investigation or Assessment
Most States have time standards for initiating the investigation or assessment of reports and monitor whether these commence within the required time standards. While some States have one timeframe for responding to all screened-in referrals, many States establish priorities. 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.6
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. Based on data from 27 States, the median response time from report to investigation was 3 days.7
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Investigated Reports
CPS agencies assign a finding—also called a disposition—to a report after the circumstances are investigated or assessed and a determination is made as to the likelihood that maltreatment occurred or that the child is at risk of maltreatment. Each State establishes specific dispositions and terminology. States crosswalk or "map" State-specific terms to standard terminology used by the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS). The major NCANDS disposition categories are described below.
- Alternative Response Nonvictim: A conclusion that the child was not identified as a victim when a response other than investigation was provided.
- Alternative Response Victim: A conclusion that the child was identified as a victim when a response other than investigation was provided.
- Indicated: An investigation disposition that concludes that maltreatment cannot be substantiated under State law or policy, but there was reason to suspect that the child may have been maltreated or was at risk of maltreatment. This is applicable only to States that distinguish between substantiated and indicated dispositions.
- Substantiated: A type of investigation disposition that concludes that the allegation of maltreatment or risk of maltreatment was supported or founded by State law or State policy. This is the highest level of finding by a State agency.
- Unsubstantiated: A type of investigation disposition that determines that there is not sufficient evidence under State law to conclude or suspect that the child has been maltreated or is at risk of being maltreated.
Dispositions of investigated or assessed reports are based on the activities of the CPS workers who assess the allegations that children in the household were maltreated. In many instances, there are allegations of more than one type of maltreatment regarding more than one child in the household. The report disposition is the most serious finding related to all allegations for all children.
For example, if an allegation of neglect was substantiated for one child, an allegation of physical abuse was unsubstantiated for the same child, and an allegation of physical abuse for a second child was unsubstantiated, the report would be substantiated. In the same example, counts of children by disposition would result in one child with a substantiated allegation, and two children with unsubstantiated allegations. Data on children are provided in Chapter 3, Victims. Because many reports have more than one child, and because of the computation of report disposition, the general tendency is for there to be more children than reports with the same disposition.
More than one-quarter of investigations or assessments resulted in a disposition of substantiated (26.4%), indicated (4.1%), or alternative response victim (0.1%), meaning that at least one child involved in each of these investigations or assessments was found to be a victim (figure 2-2). More than one-half (57.7%) of investigations or assessments led to a finding that the alleged child maltreatment was unsubstantiated.8
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Disposition of Reports by Report Source
Case-level data enable the variation in dispositions by report source to be examined.9 Based on 1.4 million reports, key findings are listed below.
- More than one-quarter (26.7%) of substantiated reports were referred by legal, law enforcement, or justice personnel. In addition, this category of reporters was responsible for about one-quarter (28.6%) of indicated reports.
- Four groups of reporters accounted for more than one-half of all unsubstantiated reports—educational personnel (17.6%); anonymous reporters (11.9%); social services personnel (10.9%); and legal, law enforcement, or justice personnel (10.8%).
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CPS Workforce and Workload
In most large jurisdictions and among many local agencies, the functions of screening and investigation are conducted by different workers. In many rural and smaller agencies, one worker may perform both functions. Using data from both types of agencies—those that differentiate and those that do not—an average workload was computed.
Data from those States that reported significant numbers of specialized workers for intake, screening, investigation, and assessment were used to estimate the number of cases that were handled by CPS workers.10 The number of screening and intake workers (1,960) compared to the number of investigation and assessment workers (14,679) were reported by 28 States. Based on these 28 States, the weighted average number of investigations or assessments per investigation or assessment worker was 63.1 per year. 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. A more accurate calculation of workload requires a systematic estimation of work for a specific timeframe.
A workload study in California estimated that an average monthly caseload for workers who exclusively provide CPS Emergency Response investigations and no other services was 16.15 investigations per worker per month or approximately 194 per year.11 Each investigation could include more than one child.
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Tables
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.
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Table Notes
Additional information regarding methodologies that were used to create the tables is provided below.
Table 2-1
- For those States that submitted the Child File, the screened-in number is the sum of the reports by disposition. For SDC States, the number is taken directly from the State's report form.
- The national referral rate, 39.1 referrals per 1,000 children in the population, was calculated from the total number of referrals and the child population in the 34 States reporting both screened-in and screened-out referrals.
- A national estimate of 2,900,000 referrals was calculated by multiplying the national referral rate (39.1) by the national child population for all 51 States (73,043,506). The result was rounded to the nearest 100,000.
Table 2-3
- The information to calculate the response in days between maltreatment report and investigation was available through State NCANDS Agency File aggregate data. "Response time" is the time from the login of a call to the State Agency from a reporter alleging child maltreatment to face-to-face contact with the alleged victim, or to contact with another person who can provide information. The number of days was calculated by dividing the number of hours between maltreatment report and investigation by 24. Hours less than 24 are considered as less than 1 day.
Table 2-6
- Only States that were able to report workforce data by screening and intake workers and investigation or assessment workers and provided data for screened-in investigations were included in calculations for screened-in investigations per investigation or assessment worker.
- The weighted average number of screened-in investigations per investigation worker is based on dividing the total number of investigations (926,741) by the total number of investigation and assessment workers (14,679) for the 28 States that submitted these data.
Chapter Two: Figures and Tables
Notes
1 The term assessment also is used. Throughout this report, the term investigation or assessment is used to include investigations, assessments, or alternative responses unless a specific approach is being discussed. back
2 Unless otherwise specified, all rates refer to children younger than 18 years old in the national population. back
3 See table 2-1, which is located at the end of this chapter. Based on data from 34 States, the national rate of referrals is 40.6 referrals per 1,000 children. A referral can include more than one child. Multiplying this rate by the national child population of 73,043,506 results in an estimated 2,958,000 referrals in 2003. The estimate was then rounded to 3,000,000. Of these approximately 950,000 were screened out and 2,008,000 were screened in. back
4 See table 2-2. back
5 "Other" nonprofessional sources includes clergy member, sports coach, camp counselor, or any perpetrator who had contact with the child victim, but the relationship is not an identified NCANDS code. back
6 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, 2003). This document is also available at http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/cps-status03. back
7 See table 2-3. back
8 See table 2-4. back
9 See table 2-5. back
10 See table 2-6. back
11 American Humane Association, 2000, SB 2030 Child Welfare Services Workload Study Report (Sacramento: California Department of Social Services). back
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