Home Visiting and Child Welfare Involvement: A Matched Comparison Group Study.

The present study is one of the largest quasi-experimental studies to date on the effects of home visiting on documented child maltreatment during a child's first two years of life. In this matched comparison group study, we compare 8796 families that participated in a home visiting program (HV families) to 8796 similar non-participating families (non-HV families) selected from birth records using Coarsened Exact Matching. Using sequential logistic regression, we identify that HV families have significantly higher odds of experiencing a child maltreatment investigation by their child's second birthday compared to non-HV families; however, among those that were investigated, HV families have significantly lower odds of having their first investigation substantiated for maltreatment. Overall, HV families do not differ significantly from non-HV families in the odds of experiencing a substantiated investigation over 2 years. We share implications for considering surveillance bias, and we highlight the importance of including both substantiated and unsubstantiated investigations when studying the effects of home visiting on documented child maltreatment.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.