Home Visiting and Child Welfare Involvement: A Matched Comparison Group Study.

Area of Science:

• Child development
• Public health
• Social work

Background:

• Home visiting programs aim to support families and prevent child maltreatment.
• Documented child maltreatment is a significant public health concern.
• Understanding the impact of interventions like home visiting is crucial.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the effect of home visiting programs on documented child maltreatment in the first two years of life.
• To compare substantiated and unsubstantiated child maltreatment investigations between home visiting and non-home visiting families.
• To explore potential surveillance bias in reporting.

Main Methods:

• Quasi-experimental, matched comparison group study.
• Compared 8,796 home visiting (HV) families with 8,796 non-HV families using Coarsened Exact Matching.
• Utilized sequential logistic regression to analyze investigation and substantiation rates.

Main Results:

• HV families had higher odds of child maltreatment investigations but lower odds of substantiated investigations.
• No significant overall difference in substantiated investigations between HV and non-HV families over two years.
• Highlighted the importance of considering both substantiated and unsubstantiated investigations.

Conclusions:

• Home visiting may increase scrutiny, leading to more investigations, but also potentially improve outcomes, reducing substantiation.
• Findings suggest surveillance bias may influence documented maltreatment rates.
• Future research should differentiate between investigation types to accurately assess program effectiveness.