Child protective services contact and youth outcomes

Background: Few studies have investigated whether Child Protective Services (CPS) contact in-fluences child wellbeing, independent of underlying maltreatment and not considered as a proxy for such maltreatment.Objective: The present study estimates the association between CPS contact and child delinquency, education, substance use, and mental health and development.Participants and setting: The study used data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a longitudinal birth cohort study of children born in 20 US cities. Study outcomes were based on age-15 interviews with the focal children and their caregivers with sample sizes ranging from 2088 to 2327 across outcomes. Methods: The relationship between CPS contact and child wellbeing was estimated using the propensity score method of inverse probability of treatment weighting.Results: CPS contact was associated with an 88% increase in the probability of smoking (p = .010), a 29 % increase in externalizing behavior (p < .001), a 27% increase in internalizing behavior (p = .001), a 18 % increase in the probability of being expelled (p = .32), a 7.5 % increase in a depression (p = .002), a 6.9 % increase in anxiety (p = .002), a 6.2 % reduction in happiness (p = .008), a 6.0 % increase in impulsivity (p < .001), and a 5.5 % increase in school troubles (p < .001).Conclusions: Despite a federal mandate to improve child wellbeing, we found no evidence that contact with the child welfare system improves child outcomes. Rather, CPS contact was asso-ciated with worse mental health and developmental outcomes.