Child Welfare System Involvement in the United States: 2016-2023

Childhood and family contexts and understanding of communicable respiratory diseases shifted during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Against this backdrop, competing hypotheses have emerged around children's risks of maltreatment and system contact, highlighting a need for greater understanding of trends in child welfare system involvement before, during, and since the COVID-19 pandemic. This study estimates the cumulative prevalence of several stages of child welfare contact for all US children and across racial and ethnic groups between 2016 and 2023.

We constructed a synthetic cohort life table of age-specific and cumulative risks of child welfare contact, using population data on child welfare events and children's race, ethnicity, and age from the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System, National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System, Population Estimates Program, and Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program.

US children's cumulative prevalence of investigation (32.2% [32.1%-32.2%]), confirmed maltreatment (9.0% [9.0%-9.0%]), foster care placement (3.6% [3.6%-3.6%]), and parental rights termination (0.9% [0.9%-0.9%]) declined between 2016 and 2023. Declines were largest between 2019 and 2020, with substantial racial and ethnic variation in magnitudes of risks and declines. As of 2023, the highest risks of child welfare system contact were among American Indian/Alaska Native and Black children, and the lowest risks were among Asian children.

The results reveal that the onset of the decline in cumulative risks of child welfare system contact preceded, rather than followed, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and accelerated during that time.