Current studentsExisting staffContact us
 

Levels of Involvement with Child Protection Services Associated with Early Adolescent Police Contact as a Victim and Person of Interest

Files

hdl_142066.pdf (549.79 KB)
  (Published version)

Date

2024

Authors

Tzoumakis, S.
Whitten, T.
Laurens, K.R.
Dean, K.
Harris, F.
Carr, V.J.
Green, M.J.

Editors

Advisors

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Type:

Journal article

Citation

Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 2024; 39(11-12):2708-2732

Statement of Responsibility

Stacy Tzoumakis, Tyson Whitten, Kristin R. Laurens, Kimberlie Dean, Felicity Harris, Vaughan J. Carr, and Melissa J. Green

Conference Name

DOI

10.1177/08862605231223468

Abstract

The relationship between childhood maltreatment and subsequent offending/victimization is well established. However, the magnitude of this relationship for different levels of child protection services (CPS) involvement is poorly understood, due to measurement issues, lack of longitudinal data, and reliance on reports of substantiated maltreatment, which can underestimate the impact of maltreatment. This study examined associations between CPS involvement during childhood (ages 0 to <11 years) and police services contact (as a victim and/or a person of interest) for criminal incidents in early adolescence (11 to ~14 years), differentiated according to levels of CPS involvement (i.e., no risk of significant harm [non-ROSH], unsubstantiated ROSH, substantiated ROSH, and out-of-home care; each examined relative to no CPS contact). Data for 71,465 children were drawn from the New South Wales Child Development Study, an intergenerational, longitudinal investigation that uses administrative records from CPS and police alongside other health, justice, and education data. Multinomial regression analyses were conducted to determine associations between increasing levels of CPS involvement and police contact as a victim only, a person of interest only, and as both victim and person of interest while accounting for covariates (i.e., child's sex, Aboriginal, and/or Torres Strait Islander background, socioeconomic status, maternal age at child's birth, and parental offending history). Children exposed to any of the four levels of CPS involvement had higher odds of police contact, relative to children with no CPS involvement. Odds ratios were higher for contact with police as both a victim and a person of interest, compared to police contact as a victim or a person of interest only. These findings highlight that children with even unsubstantiated CPS reports (i.e., non-ROSH and unsubstantiated ROSH reports) are at heightened risk of police contact compared to children who are unknown to CPS, underlining the need to support all families in contact with CPS.

School/Discipline

Dissertation Note

Provenance

Description

Access Status

Rights

© The Author(s) 2024. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). Request permissions for this article.

License

Grant ID

http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/LP110100150
 http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP170101403
 http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/FT170100294
 http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DE210100113
 http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/1058652
 http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/1148055
 http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/1133833
 http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/1175408

Published Version

http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/08862605231223468

Call number

Persistent link to this record

https://hdl.handle.net/2440/142066