The temporal-spatial distribution of seriously maltreated children

Mapping child maltreatment risk: a 12-year spatio-temporal analysis of neighborhood influences

“…Limitations to our study include the type of data used, namely, only officially reported and substantiated cases of child maltreatment under the supervision of Child Protection Services. Child maltreatment is, however, still largely underreported and underestimated, as many cases do not come to the attention of these services, or are unsubstantiated after reporting [ 4 , 44 ]. On the other hand, it is important to note that families living in high risk neighborhoods may be more visible to authorities and therefore can be more susceptible to be reported and substantiated, as these residential areas may lead to a higher surveillance by social welfare or law enforcement agencies, as compared to other residential areas [ 10 , 11 , 42 , 44 ].…”

“…Child maltreatment is, however, still largely underreported and underestimated, as many cases do not come to the attention of these services, or are unsubstantiated after reporting [ 4 , 44 ]. On the other hand, it is important to note that families living in high risk neighborhoods may be more visible to authorities and therefore can be more susceptible to be reported and substantiated, as these residential areas may lead to a higher surveillance by social welfare or law enforcement agencies, as compared to other residential areas [ 10 , 11 , 42 , 44 ]. A related issue is the potential problem of neighborhood selection bias, whereby families with higher risk of being investigated by child protection services, either choose or are forced to live in these high-risk neighborhoods [ 10 ].…”

“…This analytical approach, allows to incorporate geographical and temporal information to provide more reliable area-specific risk estimates than other non-Bayesian methods, by addressing important methodological issues such as modeling small area counts, spatial auto-correlation, or overdispersion, that can bias estimates if ignored [ 33 – 39 ]. Although Bayesian spatio-temporal disease mapping is common in other public health and epidemiological areas, this approach is relatively new in the area of family violence [ 40 – 44 ]. So far, only a handful of studies conducted in the US have addressed the spatial and temporal dimensions to study neighborhood influences on child maltreatment with appropriate methodologies [ 40 , 42 , 44 ].…”

“…Although Bayesian spatio-temporal disease mapping is common in other public health and epidemiological areas, this approach is relatively new in the area of family violence [ 40 – 44 ]. So far, only a handful of studies conducted in the US have addressed the spatial and temporal dimensions to study neighborhood influences on child maltreatment with appropriate methodologies [ 40 , 42 , 44 ]. However, these studies are usually low-resolution ones, using larger geographical areas, such as counties, zip codes, or census track, which somehow limits their potential to inform more localized interventions.…”

An Exploratory Study of Parenting in Public Places: What Can We Learn from Parents’ Activity Locations and Physical Punishment?

“…In contrast to the nascent nature of how activity spaces are related to parenting, studies examining the spatial patterning of child abuse and neglect (Paulsen 2003;Shenoi et al 2013;Thurston et al 2017) and neighborhood-level predictors of child maltreatment (Coulton et al 2007;Freisthler et al 2006) are much more robust. Child maltreatment that causes serious injury clusters in hot spots (defined by incidents geographically clustered at levels higher than chance) that change over space and time (Thurston et al 2017); child abuse hot spots were more diffuse than child neglect hot spots (Paulsen 2003); child homicides were spatially clustered in 12 hot spots covering 3% of the geographic area under study (Shenoi et al 2013). There exist geographic areas where parents may be more likely to be exposed to abusive parenting, either through witnessing events in public or through social connections.…”