Article
How safe are out-of-home placements?

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0190-7409(99)00038-9Get rights and content

Abstract

A primary reason to place children in an alternative living arrangement is to protect them from abuse or neglect. However, few studies exist that examine the safety of substitute care. This paper reports the results of a study of the rate of abuse and neglect for substitute care for a large state public child welfare agency using the existing management information systems. Findings include that the percent of indicated reports of abuse and neglect for children in out-of-home care ranged from a low of 1.7% to a high of 2.3% over a five year period. Reabuse rates are also reported by type of substitute care placement and are examined by age of child, type of abuse and perpetrator relationship for each type of out-of-home placement. Results of this study contribute to the emerging literature on the safety of substitute care.

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Cited by (29)

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    These studies tend to rely on samples of children rereported to child protective services (Fluke et al., 2008; Hélie et al., 2013) or exiting out-of-home placement (Hélie, Poirier, & Turcotte, 2014). To our knowledge, no studies have examined the maltreatment recurrence of American Indian children in foster homes (i.e., perpetrated by a foster caregiver), as studies of maltreatment in foster care and adoption typically do not report on the race of the child (e.g., Benedict et al., 1994; Hobbs et al., 1999; Katz et al., 2017; Poertner et al., 1999; Spencer & Knudsen, 1992; Tittle, Poertner, & Garnier, 2008, 2001) or exclude American Indian children in racial classification (e.g., Benedict et al., 1996; Font, 2015). Studies of transracially adopted American Indian children suggest that they are at risk of maltreatment recurrence by their adoptive caregivers, particularly physical, emotional, and sexual abuse (Harness, 2006; Sindelar, 2004).

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    Thus, children in either type of kinship care may face a higher risk of maltreatment from their family of origin. Indeed, as many as a third of maltreatment allegations occurring while a child is in OHC care allege maltreatment by someone other than the foster caregiver, including the potential for retrospective allegations against a child's family of origin (Poertner, Bussey, & Fluke, 1999; Tittle, Poertner, & Garnier, 2001). Although it is difficult to get an accurate account of maltreatment in OHC care, available studies suggest the rate may be higher than the federal mandate of .57%.

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    Although this contextual perspective may appear obvious, studies assessing risk factors for peer violence in general in RCSs and indirect and verbal victimization in particular, have so far been severely few and often examined a limited range of factors, mainly focused on the child's demographic characteristics such as the child's gender and age. Previous studies too frequently overlooked the experiences (e.g., Davidson-Arad & Golan, 2007; Poertner et al., 1999; Sekol & Farrington, 2009) of youth in RCSs and institution-level factors and their association with children's experiences of peer violence. Existing studies on peer violence in public care have usually shown, similarly to school-related studies (e.g., Attar-Schwartz & Khoury-Kassabri, 2008; Nansel et al., 2001; Olweus, 1993; Ostrov & Keating, 2004), that girls are more likely to be victimized by and to be aggressors of indirect violence, such as rumor spreading and social exclusion.

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This project was supported by the Children and Family Research Center, School of Social Work, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign which is funded in part by the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.

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