Exposure to Domestic Violence/Intimate Partner Violence Is Associated With Child Welfare System Involvement

KEY POINTS

• Existing research shows that children’s exposure to domestic violence (DV)/ intimate partner violence (IPV) increases the likelihood of involvement with the child welfare system (including child protective services (CPS) involvement and foster care entry). For example, high co-occurrence rates, estimated between 30 and 60 percent, indicate that IPV is present in a substantial share of child maltreatment cases.
• IPV encompasses multiple domains, including emotional abuse, isolation or coercive control, economic control, work or school interference, physical IPV, sexual coercion, injury or escalation, and child-exposed IPV. Among the domains examined in this brief, physical IPV showed the strongest association with CPS involvement.
• Exposure to physical IPV is associated with higher CPS involvement:
  • Families in which children were exposed to caregiver physical IPV were up to twice as likely to experience CPS involvement across all developmental periods examined (birth to age 5, ages 5–9, and ages 9–15).
  • Prior physical IPV exposure increases the likelihood of first CPS involvement by up to 2.5 times across childhood.
  • This association is present throughout childhood and adolescence, with the difference in cumulative CPS involvement between children with and without early physical IPV exposure widening from about 5 percentage points at age 5 to about 10 percentage points by age 9 and remaining at about that level through age 15.
• Administrative data likely underestimates the role of DV/IPV and its relationship to child welfare involvement (including CPS, foster care entry, and permanency placements) due to inconsistent identification and reporting.
• Addressing DV/IPV is an important factor to reducing foster care entries and improving child and family outcomes. Policy responses can focus on improved prevention and family stabilization, while avoiding unintended consequences for non-offending caregivers.

*This content is in the process of Section 508 review. If you need immediate assistance accessing this content, please submit a request to Danielle Berman, Danielle.Berman@hhs.gov Content will be updated pending the outcome of the Section 508 review.