Child Neglect: Service Paths and Young Adult Outcomes

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Children reported for neglect and abuse are heavily represented in multiple public service sectors (Jonson-Reid, Drake, Kim, & colleagues, 2003) and are at risk of poor adult outcomes (Widom, 2000), yet cross-sector service research to help us understand how services are associated with these adult outcomes is rare. This application "Child Neglect: Service Paths and Young Adult Outcomes" will extend a currently funded child neglect study (5 R01 MH61733-03) that tracks neglected, abused and poor comparison children to age 18 to follow those children through young adulthood. The study will model early adult mental health service use and violent criminal behavior for poor individuals with and without histories of maltreatment, with an emphasis on modeling these outcomes as a function of childhood service patterns across child welfare, mental health, special education and juvenile justice systems. A secondary aim is to describe rates of other key outcomes (death, young adult poverty or childbirth) for subjects in our study according to neglect, abuse or poverty only history. Prior findings suggest that both special education status and child welfare services are key factors in models of outcomes. The proposed study augments data from these systems with manual review (approximately 1200 case files) to better assess services provided to and outcomes for these subjects as we look at the link between childhood services and young adult outcomes. This continuation extends our current panel (now followed from birth through 17years), using multiple imputation techniques to follow them to age 25. The large sample (N=23,981) includes an AFDC/maltreated group (n=11,866) with a report of abuse or neglect in 1993-94 and a randomly selected AFDC only group (n=12,115) matched by age and region, excluding those who died in childhood. A supplementary comparison includes 4,304 individuals reported for maltreatment and not in families on AFDC. The proposed work will be the only known study, extant or planned, combining broad cross-sector service coverage across maltreated and poverty only children through young adulthood, with sufficient sample size to capture rare, but important, outcomes (e.g., death, homelessness) and model complex service patterns. Supported by a multidisciplinary research team with expertise in child and adult research, close ties to the participating agencies, expertise in administrative and case file data collection and analysis, this study will provide unique, timely and policy-relevant information regarding the transition to adulthood for some of society's most vulnerable children.