Safe Communities: Percent of children re-abused within 6 months of a report of child abuse

What does this measure?

• Percent of children who have a finding of abuse or neglect within six months of their initial abuse finding.

Why is it important?

• The Children's Administration closely monitors and strives to implement supports and strategies for those families who have multiple founded allegations of abuse, so that vulnerable children are protected from further abuse.
• The federal standard requires that, at a minimum, 94.6 percent of children who have been the victims of abuse or neglect will be protected from any additional founded allegations of abuse or neglect. The rate of children free from additional abuse in Washington State has failed to meet the federal standard throughout the seven-year tracking period; however has made consistent improvement since 2001.
• The administration has worked toward improving practice so that fewer children experience additional incidents of abuse or neglect at the hands of their caregivers.

How is Washington doing?

• An analysis of the effects of the 24/72 hour response to referrals indicates that children are safer when seen sooner. A series of analyses has demonstrated that the decline in recurrence was highly likely to be the result of seeing children more quickly rather than changes in other factors.
• The analysis showed a marked decline in the rates of recurrence of child abuse. The drop in the 6-month recurrence rate is holding, and is even lower for the most recent Jan-Jun 07 entry cohort. This is continuing good news for children and also for Washington's efforts to meet the target for the Federal measure (6.1 percent).

What is state government’s role?

• Social workers are tasked with the difficult work of determining which referrals warrant investigation and which do not based upon the information provided by a referent and specific legal criteria. If a social worker determines that a child is at moderate to high risk of harm, Child Protective Services (CPS) staff accepts the referral for investigation. Once a referral is accepted, a level of severity and urgency is assessed to determine the time frames within which an investigating social worker must make or attempt to make face-to-face contact with a vulnerable child.
• Governor Christine Gregoire mandated in 2005 that Child Protective Services speed up the time in which social workers respond to referrals of suspected child abuse or neglect. Historically social workers were required to initiate investigations where children were at risk of imminent harm within 24 hours, and make face-to-face contact with children as soon as possible within ten working days of receiving referrals.
• As of April 29, 2005, social workers must make face-to-face contact within 24 hours of the administration receiving an emergent referral. Effective August 8, 2005, the face-to-face contact response time for non-emergent referrals where children are assessed not to be at imminent risk of harm decreased from ten working days to 72 hours of receiving referrals. The federal program improvement goal for timely investigations is for social workers to make face-to-face contact with children within required response times at a rate of 90 percent by September 2006.
• The administration surpassed the 2006 goal in every quarter of Fiscal Year 2007 for emergent referrals as well as for non-emergent referrals

Graph & Data Set

	% of children re-abused within 6 months of a report of child abuse
Jul-Dec 2004	12.2%
Jan-Jun 2005	11.6%
Jul-Dec 2005	9.6%
Jan-Jun 2006	9.1%
Jul-Dec 2006	7.2%
Jan-Jun 2007	7.9%

For more information…
Contact: Department of Social & Health Services