 Have child maltreatment and child placement rates declined?Leroy H. Pelton Children and Youth Services Review, 2013, vol. 35, issue 11, 1816-1822 Abstract: It is argued that the actual incidence of child maltreatment remains elusive and is, in fact, indeterminate. Factors that might be reflected in variations in child maltreatment rates, other than child harm or endangerment at least partially attributable to caretakers, are explored. But since most children residing in foster care in the United States have been placed there for the alleged reasons of child abuse and neglect, we might expect trends over time in the rate of alleged maltreatment to have some bearing on the out-of-home placement population rate. On the contrary, it is shown that the child placement population rate has risen in recent years, even though the overall child maltreatment rate has not. Based on existing data, the child placement population in the United States is calculated to have been nearly one million children on any given day in 2011, higher than at any point throughout the previous century. Brief comparisons are made with child maltreatment and child placement trends in other countries. Keywords: Child welfare; Child maltreatment; Child abuse and neglect; Child placement; Foster care; Adoption (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:35:y:2013:i:11:p:1816-1822 DOI: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2013.08.009 Access Statistics for this article Children and Youth Services Review is currently edited by Duncan Lindsey More articles in Children and Youth Services Review from Elsevier |
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