Citation

Smith BD, Kay ES, Pressley TD. Child Abuse Negl. 2018; 80: 52-61.

Affiliation

University of Alabama, School of Social Work, Box 870314, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487, United States.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.chiabu.2018.03.012

PMID

29567457

Abstract

Building on research that has identified community characteristics associated with child maltreatment, this study investigates the adequacy and equity of the child welfare response at the county level. The study focuses on states in the U.S. south with demographic characteristics that make it possible to disentangle county racial composition from county rurality. County-level child maltreatment data were merged with data from the U.S. Census and other publicly-available sources for the 354 counties in four southern states.

RESULTS from multiple regression models indicated that, despite a greater preponderance of risk factors typically associated with child maltreatment, rural, majority African-American counties had lower rates of reported and substantiated child maltreatment compared to other southern counties. Cross-sectional results were consistent across three years: 2012, 2013, and 2014. The findings suggest that children and families in rural, majority African-American counties in the South may not be receiving adequate or equitable responses from the formal child welfare system.

Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Language: en

Keywords

Child maltreatment; Maltreatment reports; Poverty; Race; Rural counties; U.S. South