Poster #3 - The Protective Aspects of Child Care for Children Involved in Child Protective Services for Neglect

• In Event: 2-001 - Poster Session 1 during Breakfast

Abstract

The negative effects of neglect generally on children’s development has been documented (Widom, 2014), yet few studies focus on the different subtypes of neglect or even multiple domains of development, such as cognitive and social-emotional. The effects of supervision neglect compared to physical neglect might vary in terms of children’s cognitive or social-emotional development (Font & Berger, 2015). One potential buffer for children who experience maltreatment is child care (Klein, 2016), but there is a lack of evidence of the protective benefits among children who experience neglect. To address these gaps in the literature, the current study investigated two research questions: 1) How do different dimension of child care (e.g. participation, type of care, and quantity) relate to children’s cognitive and social-emotional well-being among children involved in CPS for neglect? 2) How do these associations vary based on the type of neglect (e.g. physical and supervision neglect)?

To address these questions, I will use the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-being II, a longitudinal and nationally representative sample of 5,873 children aged 0 to 17.5 years, who had CPS investigations closed between February 2008 and April 2009. The sample will be limited to children who are five years or younger and who live with their parents at wave 1 (N = 2,142). The sample will be further limited to children who entered CPS for any type of neglect (N = 1,790). Neglect will not be limited to substantiated cases because this sample is at risk of adverse development regardless of substantiation (Hussey et al., 2005). Neglect subtypes (supervision or physical), child care characteristics (type, number of weeks, and hours per week), and covariates were measured at wave 1. Child well-being will be modeled at waves 2 and 3. All analyses will be conducted in Mplus 7.4 (Muthén, & Muthén, 2015) in two stages using SEM. I will use full information maximum likelihood estimation to account for missing data. In the first stage, I will use multiple regressions to estimate how participation in child care, type of child care, number of weeks in care, and number of hours per week in care at wave 1 are associated with children’s cognitive and social-emotional development. In the second stage, I will use multiple group models to investigate whether child care reduces association between neglect and child development differently by neglect subtypes (supervision neglect only, physical neglect only, and both types of neglect).

Author

• Kierra MP Sattler, The University of Texas at Austin
  Presenting Author