What Proportion of Foster Care Children Do Not Have Child Protective Services Reports? A Preliminary Look
What Proportion of Foster Care Children Do Not Have Child Protective Services Reports? A Preliminary Look
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DOI：
10.1177/10775595211033855
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发表时间：
2021-07-25
影响因子：
5.1
通讯作者：
Stubblefield, Jessica L.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Drake, Brett;Fluke, John D.;Stubblefield, Jessica L.
也许令人惊讶的是，我们缺乏关于儿童为什么进入寄养的完整的国家信息。虽然年度收养和寄养分析报告系统（AFCARS）的报告是翔实的，它留下了许多问题没有回答，特别是“有多少儿童进入寄养的方式以外的儿童保护服务（CPS）的报告？“从一个独特的新的综合数据集，我们检查了寄养数据（AFCARS）和CPS报告数据（国家虐待儿童和虐待儿童数据系统儿童文件）。链接数据集包括2017年寄养安置的210，062名儿童，在过去5年中没有安置。我们将每个被安置的儿童沿着两个维度进行分类，每个维度有四个级别：自之前CPS报告以来的时间（如果有的话）和AFCARS安置原因，从明显虐待到明显没有虐待。我们还跟踪了被安置儿童的兄弟姐妹，看看没有受到虐待的儿童是否因为受到虐待的兄弟姐妹而进入护理中心。我们发现，8-35%的儿童因虐待以外的原因进入寄养家庭，这取决于阈值的设定。当考虑到兄弟姐妹时，这些数字有所下降。有意义的大量儿童被安置在寄养的原因以外的虐待由CPS调查。有必要对这些儿童进行进一步研究，以更好地为寄养政策提供信息。
It is perhaps surprising that we lack complete national information about why children enter foster care. While the annual Adoption and Foster Care Analysis Reporting System (AFCARS) report is informative, it leaves many questions unanswered, particularly "how many children enter foster care by means other than Child Protective Services (CPS) reports?" Drawing from a unique new integrated dataset, we examined foster care data (AFCARS) and CPS report data (National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System Child File). The linked dataset included 210,062 children with foster care placements in 2017 and no placements in the prior 5 years. We categorized each placed child along two dimensions of four levels each: Time since prior CPS report (if any) and stated AFCARS placement reason, ranging from clearly maltreated to clearly not maltreated. We also tracked the siblings of placed children, to see if non-maltreated children entered care because of maltreated siblings. We find that between 8-35% of children enter foster care for reasons other than maltreatment, depending how thresholds are set. These numbers decline somewhat when siblings are considered. A meaningfully large number of children are placed in foster care for reasons other than maltreatment investigated by CPS. Further research into these children is warranted to better inform foster care policy.