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This report presents national data about child abuse and neglect known to child protective services (CPS) agencies in the United States during 2001. The data were collected and analyzed through the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) by the Children's Bureau, Administration on Children, Youth and Families in the Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
This chapter discusses the background and continuing development of NCANDS and describes the annual data collection process. Highlights of the report —including key national estimates and an overview of the report's sections —are provided.
The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) was amended in 1988 to direct the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to establish a national data collection and analysis program to make available State child abuse and neglect reporting information.1 The Department responded by establishing NCANDS as a voluntary, national reporting system. In 1992, the Department produced its first NCANDS report based on data from 1990. The Child Maltreatment report series evolved from this initial report.
In 1996, CAPTA was amended to require all States that receive funds from the Basic State Grant program to work with the Secretary of the Department to provide specific data, to the extent practicable, on children who had been maltreated.2 The NCANDS data elements were revised to meet these requirements (appendix A).
During the initial design phase of NCANDS, the Department convened a State Advisory Group composed of State CPS program administrators and information systems managers. This group suggested data items and definitions that would best represent a national profile of child maltreatment. As NCANDS evolves, the group continues to meet to discuss ways to improve the participation of States in providing data to NCANDS. The 2001 State Advisory Group members are listed below:
Deborah Langham, Alabama
Mary Tran, California
Donna J. Pope, Ph.D., Colorado
Eileen Breslin, Connecticut
Susan K. Chase, Florida
Otto D. Lynn, L.S.W., Nevada
Donna Keys, New York
Kevin Kelly, North Carolina
Leslie McGee, Ohio
Bill D. Hindman, Oklahoma
Shirley Vassy, Georgia
Rebecca Meyer, Iowa
Walter G. Fahr, Louisiana
Lee Hunsberger, Michigan
Rita L. Katzman, Virginia
Jim White, Oregon
Susan Stockwell, Pennsylvania
Navina Forsythe, Utah
Phillip M. Zunder, Ph.D., Vermont
A technical assistance meeting for all States is held each year in conjunction with the National Child Welfare Data Conference. This meeting serves as a forum for providing guidance to the States for their annual data submissions and provides an opportunity to discuss data utilization.
Data collected by NCANDS have been a critical source of information for many publications and reports. Most recently, data from NCANDS were incorporated into the Child and Family Services Review (CFSR), which ensures conformity with State plan requirements in titles IV-B and IV-E of the Social Security Act. Data on recurrence of maltreatment and on the occurrence of maltreatment in foster care are the basis for two of the standards in the CFSR.
An annual departmental report on child welfare outcomes also includes context and outcome data on safety, based on State submissions to NCANDS.3 Data on the characteristics of children who have been maltreated, as well as data on the two safety outcomes —recurrence of maltreatment and maltreatment in foster care —are reported as well.
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States submit a child-specific record for each report alleging child abuse or neglect that received a disposition as a result of an investigation or an assessment during the calendar year.4 The data fields in the child-specific record include the demographics of the children and their perpetrators, the types of maltreatment, investigation or assessment dispositions, risk factors, and services provided as a result of the investigation or assessment. A record number of States (39) submitted child-level data for 2001. The populations of these States account for more than 80 percent (84.4%) of the child population in the United States and a similar percentage (85.4%) of child victims of maltreatment.5
The statistics for the child population younger than 18 years for 2001 had not been released by the U.S. Census Bureau at the time of this publication. Therefore, estimates for 2001, by State, were constructed using the 2000 data from the Census Bureau and January 1, 2002 estimates from Claritas, Inc.6
The 39 States also reported aggregate-level data for some items that were not obtainable at the child level, such as the number of child protective services workers. The remaining 12 States reported only aggregate statistics through the Summary Data Component (SDC).
Upon receipt of data from each State, a technical validation review was conducted to assess the internal consistency of the data and to identify probable causes for missing data. In many instances, the review concluded that corrections were necessary and the States were requested to resubmit their data. Once a State's case-level data were finalized, aggregate counts were computed and shared with the State. The final step in the data collection process was to develop a composite file of aggregate statistics for all States regardless of the original data source. All analyses for this report were conducted with this composite file unless otherwise noted. The types of data submitted by each State and the data elements in this aggregate data file are presented in appendix C.
Commentary for State data and contact information for State representatives are presented in appendix D.
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The following is a list of key findings from the report. The findings are arranged by chapter.
Reports
Each week, CPS agencies receive more than 50,000 referrals alleging that children have been abused or neglected. More than two-thirds of these referrals were screened in by CPS agencies because they were deemed appropriate for investigation or assessment.
| * | Nationally, 67.4 percent of all referrals (approximately 1,802,000) were screened in (also called reports) and 32.5 percent (approximately 870,000) were screened out. |
| * | Professionals submitted more than half (56.5%) of the screened-in referrals. Nonprofessional report sources, which include family and community members, submitted the remaining 43.5 percent of screened-in referrals. |
| * | Most States have established time standards for initiating the investigation of reports. The average response time from submission of the report to investigation was 50 hours. |
| * | More than one-quarter of investigations or assessments resulted in a "Substantiated" (27.5%), "Indicated" (4.4%), or "Alternative Response Victim"(0.4%) disposition, meaning that at least one child involved in an investigation was determined to be a victim. More than half (59.2%) of investigations led to a finding that the alleged maltreatment was "Unsubstantiated."8 |
| * | The average number of investigations per investigation/assessment worker was 69 per year. |
Victims
Victims of maltreatment are defined as children who experienced or who were at risk of experiencing abuse or neglect.
| * | Nationally, an estimated 903,000 children were victims of abuse and neglect in 2001. Statistically, the 2001 victimization rate of 12.4 is comparable to the 2000 rate of 12.2 per 1,000 children. This is especially true as the 2001 child population base numbers were estimated. Both the 2000 and 2001 rates are lower than the 1998 rate. The 1999 rate is considered an outlier (extreme value) that was unduly influenced by the census population estimates. |
| * | During 2001, 57.2 percent of victims suffered neglect (including medical neglect), 18.6 percent were physically abused, and 9.6 percent were sexually abused; 26.6 percent of victims were associated with additional types of maltreatment. |
| * | Percentages of victims were similar for males and females (48.0% and 51.5% respectively). The sex for 0.5 percent of child victims was unknown or not reported. |
| * | Children in the age group of birth to 3 years accounted for 27.7 percent of victims. Victimization percentages declined as age increased. |
| * | More than half of all victims were White (50.2%); one-quarter (25.0%) were African American; and one-sixth (14.5%) were Hispanic. American Indians and Alaska Natives accounted for 2.0 percent of victims, and Asian-Pacific Islanders accounted for 1.3 percent of victims. |
| * | Children who had been victimized in a prior year were more than twice as likely to experience recurrence compared to children without a history of victimization. |
Perpetrators
A perpetrator of child abuse or neglect is defined as a parent or a caretaker who has maltreated a child.
| * | Women comprised 59.3 percent of all perpetrators, while men comprised 40.7 percent. Female perpetrators were typically younger than male perpetrators —42.3 percent of females compared to 31.9 percent of males were younger than 30 years old. |
| * | A child was most likely to be victimized by his or her mother (40.5%). One "Parent," acting alone, accounted for 80.9 percent of all perpetrators.9 |
| * | For almost every type of perpetrator, neglect was the most common type of maltreatment. |
| * | Almost one-third (31.5%) of perpetrators with a relationship code of "Other Relative" were associated with sexual abuse. Only 4.7% perpetrators coded as "Parent" were associated with sexual abuse. |
Fatalities
Child fatality estimates are based on data recorded by CPS agencies or other agencies, such as a coroner's office or fatality review boards.
| * | Nationally, an estimated 1,300 children died of abuse or neglect —a rate of 1.81 children per 100,000 children in the population. |
| * | Approximately 1.5 percent of child fatalities occurred in foster care. |
| * | Children younger than 1 year old accounted for 40.9 percent of fatalities, and 84.5 percent of fatalities were younger than 6 years of age. |
| * | Maltreatment deaths were more often associated only with neglect (35.6%) than with any other type of abuse. |
| * | Less than 10 percent (8.8%) of the families of child fatality victims had received family preservation services in the 5 years prior to the deaths, while less than 1 percent (0.9%) of child fatality victims had been in foster care and returned to their families within 5 years prior to their deaths. |
Services
CPS agencies provide services to prevent future instances of child abuse or neglect and to remedy conditions that have come to the attention of the child welfare agency. Preventive services are provided to parents whose children are at risk of abuse or neglect. Postinvestigation services are offered to families on a voluntary basis by child welfare agencies or are ordered by the courts to ensure the safety of children. Data on postinvestigation services are reported if the services were provided within 90 days of the disposition of the report.
| * | Nationally, an estimated two million children were recipients of preventive services. |
| * | The weighted average time from the start of an investigation to provision of service was 48 days. |
| * | More than half, 58.4 percent, of the child victims (an estimated 528,000), received postinvestigation services, while more than one-quarter, 28.8 percent, of nonvictims (an estimated 629,000 children), received postinvestigation services. |
| * | About a fifth of victims (19.0%) were removed from their homes as a result of investigations or assessments. In addition, 4.7 percent of nonvictims were placed in foster care. Nationally it is estimated that more than 275,000 children were placed in foster care as a result of child abuse investigations or assessments. |
| * | Court actions were initiated for 17.5 percent (an estimated 90,000) of victims. Nearly one-fifth of victims (18.3%) were reported as having court-appointed representatives. |
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This report contains the additional chapters listed below. Throughout the report, supplementary tables that contain supporting data are located at the end of each chapter:
A reader survey is included to solicit advice for future reports (appendix E). Please take a few minutes to complete and return the survey per the instructions at the end of the survey form.
Notes
1 42 U.S.C. 5101
et seq.; 42 U.S.C. 5116 et seq., Public Law 100-294 passed April
25, 1988. Back
2 In this report,
"States" includes the District of Columbia. Back
3 U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services, Administration on Children, Youth and
Families, Child Welfare Outcomes 2000: Annual Report
(Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2003). Back
4 CPS agencies
assign a finding, known as a disposition, to a report alleging
maltreatment after the circumstances are investigated or assessed.
Back
5 Here and
throughout the report, the term "child population" refers to all
people in the U.S. population younger than 18 years. Supporting
data are provided in supplementary table
1-1, which is located at
the end of this chapter. Back
6 U.S. Bureau of
Census, Census 2000 Summary File 1: http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/DatasetMainPageServlet.
Year 2002 estimates produced by Claritas Inc., Copyright 2002
Claritas Inc., Arlington, VA. Back
7 Highlights
denoted with an asterisk (*) designate data elements required by
CAPTA. Back
8 Terms that are
capitalized and in quotation marks are used by NCANDS, other terms
in quotation marks refer to State-specific terminology. Back
9 In this report,
the terms "Parent," "Mother," and "Father" include biological
parent, adoptive parent, and stepparent. Back
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