Department of Psychology, Clark University, United States.
Connecticut Children's Medical Center, United States.
Child Abuse Negl. 2020 Oct;108:104688. doi: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2020.104688. Epub 2020 Aug 24.
Child protective services (CPS) case records contain a vast amount of narrative information that is underutilized for estimating risk, conceptualizing family needs, and planning for services.
The current study applied a novel method for quantifying family-level severity of maltreatment and non-maltreatment-related adversity types to narrative information reflecting a family's full CPS history.
Cases were randomly sampled (N = 100) from two regions of Connecticut that were referred over a specified 6-month period.
De-identified data were extracted through comprehensive chart review of electronic and paper case records. The Yale-Vermont Adversity in Childhood Scale (Y-VACS; Holbrook et al., 2015) was used to quantify adversity severity across a range of intrafamilial and extrafamilial experiences.
Several family-level adversity severity ratings were associated with administrative data on allegations and investigative outcomes. Poly-victimization (β = .47, p < .001) and poly-deprivation (β = .25, p = .005) significantly predicted total allegation types and total substantiation types (β = .30, p = .002; β = .26, p = .008, respectively) across the case history. Poly-victimization significantly predicted the presence of a new allegation within 12 months of the index report, OR = 1.72, SE = .25, p = .027.
Findings support the feasibility of a novel method that uses narrative case record information to quantify severity of maltreatment and non-maltreatment-related adversity types, as well as cumulative measures of threat- and deprivation-based adversities at the family level. Implications for utilizing case record data to inform CPS intervention are discussed.
儿童保护服务（CPS）案件记录包含大量未充分利用的叙述性信息，这些信息可用于评估风险、概念化家庭需求以及规划服务。
本研究应用一种新方法来量化家庭层面的虐待和非虐待相关逆境类型的严重程度，以反映家庭完整 CPS 历史的叙述性信息。
从康涅狄格州的两个地区随机抽取（N=100）在指定的 6 个月内转介的案例。
通过对电子和纸质案件记录的综合图表审查，提取去识别数据。耶鲁-佛蒙特逆境儿童量表（Y-VACS；Holbrook 等人，2015 年）用于量化一系列家庭内和家庭外经历的逆境严重程度。
几个家庭层面的逆境严重程度评分与指控和调查结果的行政数据相关。多受害者（β=.47，p<.001）和多剥夺（β=.25，p=.005）显著预测了整个案件历史中的指控类型总数和证实类型总数（β=.30，p=.002；β=.26，p=.008）。多受害者显著预测了在索引报告后 12 个月内出现新指控的情况，OR=1.72，SE=.25，p=.027。
研究结果支持使用叙述性案件记录信息来量化虐待和非虐待相关逆境类型的严重程度以及家庭层面基于威胁和剥夺的逆境累积措施的新方法的可行性。讨论了利用案件记录数据为 CPS 干预提供信息的影响。
