Skip to main content

A deeper look at out-of-home care

Dec. 15, 2020, 8:00 AM

by Bill Snyder

Higher levels of poverty, single-parent households and unemployment, lower education levels and lack of health insurance are well-established, community-level risk factors associated with children being placed in out-of-home care. 

Previous studies have been limited by sample size and by the broad geographic areas they encompassed, however. 

In a paper published in the journal Child Abuse & Neglect, Sarah Lotspeich, PhD, Rameela Raman, PhD, and colleagues studied 33,890 instances of child welfare agency involvement between 2011 and 2018 in a single state. 

By linking administrative data to census data via geocoding, they were able to identify risk factors for children under 19 being placed in out-of-home care, raising the possibility that prevention efforts can be geographically targeted. 

“An improved understanding of the landscape leading up to a child being placed in out-of-home care may help identify avenues for prevention,” the authors noted. “This (study) stands as a promising approach to capture cases as well as identify risk factors that can help inform policy.” 

Recent Stories from VUMC News and Communications Publications

Vanderbilt Medicine
Hope
Momentum
VUMC Voice

more