Citation

Kim M, Garcia AR, Yang S, Jung N. Child Abuse Negl. 2018; 82: 59-71.

Affiliation

Department of Social Work, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.chiabu.2018.05.018

PMID

29864610

Abstract

Relying on data from a nationally representative sample of youth involved in the child welfare system (CWS) in 1999-2000 (the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being, Cohort 1) and 2008-2009 (Cohort 2), this study implemented a diverse set of disparity indicators to estimate area-socioeconomic disparities in mental health (MH) services use and changes in area-socioeconomic disparities between the two cohorts. Our study found that there are area-socioeconomic disparities in MH service use, indicating that the rates of MH service use among youth referred to the CWS differ by area-socioeconomic positions defined by county-level poverty rates. We also found that area-socioeconomic disparities increased over time. However, the magnitude of the increase varied widely across disparity measures, suggesting that there are different conclusions about the trend and magnitude of area-socioeconomic disparities, depending upon which disparity measures are implemented. A greater understanding of the methodological differences among disparity measures is warranted, which will in turn impact how interventions are designed to reduce socioeconomic disparities among children in the CWS.

Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Language: en

Keywords

Child welfare; Disparity; Dispariy indicators; Mental health services; Poverty; Socioeconomic status