"Differential response has emerged as part of a larger movement in child welfare that emphasizes family-focused, strengths-based approaches to supporting child and family well-being. Over the past 18 years, many child welfare administrators and others interested in the delivery of child welfare services have become increasingly concerned that an investigative response to child maltreatment reports was inflexible and adversarial and did not provide sufficient services to meet family needs ... A central tenet of differential response is that many children and families brought to the attention of child protective services (CPS) can be better served using a supportive and collaborative approach that is free of the constraints and stigma of an investigation ... Therefore, many state and local child protective services systems have been redesigned to include a differential response approach ... This literature review presents a brief history and description of the practices that define differential response, as well as findings from several evaluation studies."--Page 1.

Child maltreatment results in over 3 million referrals annually to U. S. child protective services agencies and an estimated 695,000 children who are determined to be child maltreatment victims. There are ongoing concerns about the large volume and complexity of referrals and the appropriateness of an investigative model that has been criticized as adversarial, intrusive, and inappropriate for some referrals. In response, a Differential Response Model of child protection has emerged, with investigative and non-investigative alternative response paths that better acknowledge the complexities of child maltreatment and child protection. The purpose of this study was to add to the knowledge base by identifying the relationships and significance of county-level community variables in the investigative and non-investigative response paths of the Differential Response Model. Secondary data analysis used retrospective child maltreatment data from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System. County-level data on social, economic, and demographic variables were obtained from the American Community Survey, an ongoing national survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. The final dataset included 62,499 cases in 98 counties from Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina, and Virginia. Predictor variables included data at child, county, and state levels. Multilevel modeling procedures were used to build multiple three-level models to analyze predictors for the binary outcome variable of child protective services differential response path: alternative response (noninvestigation) or non-alternative response (investigation). The final three-level model demonstrated that county-level factors accounted for 12.30% of the variability in the response path outcome variable. Key results indicated that the county-level variables of housing vacancy, unemployment, child poverty, and households with public assistance were significant (p

This Handbook examines core questions still remaining in the field of child maltreatment. It addresses major challenges in child maltreatment work, starting with the question of what child abuse and neglect is exactly. It then goes on to examine why maltreatment occurs and what its consequences are. Next, it turns to prevention, treatment and intervention, as well as legal perspectives. The book studies the issue from the perspective of the broader international and cross-cultural human experience. Its aim is to review what is known, but even more importantly, to examine what remains to be known to make progress in helping abused children, their families, and their communities.

Ohio has a Differential Response child protection system. This means children services agencies have two options for responding to accepted reports of child abuse and neglect: a Traditional Response pathway (for whenever children are determined to be in serious and immediate risk of harm) and an Alternative Response pathway (for when reports of abuse or neglect do not allege serious or imminent harm).

Each year, child protective services receive reports of child abuse and neglect involving six million children, and many more go unreported. The long-term human and fiscal consequences of child abuse and neglect are not relegated to the victims themselves-they also impact their families, future relationships, and society. In 1993, the National Research Council (NRC) issued the report, Under-standing Child Abuse and Neglect, which provided an overview of the research on child abuse and neglect. New Directions in Child Abuse and Neglect Research updates the 1993 report and provides new recommendations to respond to this public health challenge. According to this report, while there has been great progress in child abuse and neglect research, a coordinated, national research infrastructure with high-level federal support needs to be established and implemented immediately. New Directions in Child Abuse and Neglect Research recommends an actionable framework to guide and support future child abuse and neglect research. This report calls for a comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach to child abuse and neglect research that examines factors related to both children and adults across physical, mental, and behavioral health domains-including those in child welfare, economic support, criminal justice, education, and health care systems-and assesses the needs of a variety of subpopulations. It should also clarify the causal pathways related to child abuse and neglect and, more importantly, assess efforts to interrupt these pathways. New Directions in Child Abuse and Neglect Research identifies four areas to look to in developing a coordinated research enterprise: a national strategic plan, a national surveillance system, a new generation of researchers, and changes in the federal and state programmatic and policy response.