Using Child Protective Services Case Record Data to Quantify Family-Level Severity of Adversity Types, Poly-victimization, and Poly-deprivation

Background: 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.

Objective: 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.

Participants and setting: Cases were randomly sampled (N = 100) from two regions of Connecticut that were referred over a specified 6-month period.

Methods: 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.

Results: 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.

Conclusions: 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.