213316 Maltreatment fatality reporting patterns

Tuesday, November 10, 2009: 8:30 AM

Myles Edwards, PhD , Director of Research for Children and Animals, American Humane Association, Englewood, CO
     
The decision process to categorize a child death to be as a result of maltreatment can be a time consuming set of activities that result in delay of data collection. The National Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting System (NCANDS) has had to address the issue of child abuse and neglect allegations being resolved with a disposition years after the allegations were made. These late cases have been excluded from reporting data sets as a solution. This paper will compare reported results with adjusted results from a set of records that were excluded because disposition was not resolved for years. This will be done by reanalyzing child fatality records based upon the year of maltreatment report rather than the year of maltreatment report disposition. Records that had been excluded due to non-timely processing will be included in the reanalysis. Patterns of child age, child race and ethnicity, population based rates by state and maltreatment types will be compared between the original analysis based upon record inclusion by maltreatment report disposition data. Federal fiscal years 2005, 2006 and 2007 will be examined. States will be included if at least one child fatality due to maltreatment has been reported in each of the three years. This presentation will address the question "Do some maltreatment fatality results occur because of practice methods rather than what is going on with children and families?

Learning Objectives:
Describe the effect of late data reports on national maltreatment fatality reporting patterns. Describe the study done to address that lost data. Describe the factors considered in the outcome of that study.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have worked in the area of child maltreatment research for 30 years, with these data for fifteen years and have published on these data.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

See more of: Expanding the Evidence Base: Status of Current Research
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