Rereporting and Recurrence of Child Maltreatment: Findings from NCANDS

This report presents findings from a longitudinal analysis of child abuse reporting data spanning five years, derived from nine states' submissions to the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System, known as NCANDS. The study focuses on the phenomena of "rereporting" which occurs when individual children have been the subject of more than one maltreatment investigation, and "recurrence" which refers to children who have been victimized more than once (i.e. multiple investigations have substantiated abuse or neglect allegations). Reducing recurrence is a key safety goal of child protective services systems. Until recently, however, it has been impossible to analyze federal child abuse data across multiple years. The analysis described here was conducted by staff of Walter R. McDonald and Associates under contract to ASPE and in cooperation with the Administration for Children and Families.