An examination of child protective service involvement among offspring born to young mothers in foster care
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Nationally, the rate of teen births has dropped significantly over the past quarter century and currently stands at a historic low. However, females in foster care, and those who recently exited from care, have increased birth rates during their teen years in comparison to peers. Research in California found that among females in foster care at age 17, 11.4% had given birth at least once before age 18 and 28.1% by age 20. Due to federal laws that have extended foster care services to non-minor dependents, there may be a growing population of pregnant and parenting youth under the supervision of child protective services (CPS) in the years to come. Yet, the number of pregnant and parenting youth in care were not systematically documented by the child protection system nationally prior to 2016 and little is known about the outcomes of the offspring. ? Although interviews with young parents in foster care indicate they are motivated to prevent two-generation CPS involvement for their children, the risk may be increased because of the lack of financial, emotional, social, and parenting support. A study in Illinois found that 39% of offspring born to parents in care were investigated by age 5. This paper is organized as a three-study dissertation focused on young mothers in foster care and the two-generation risk of CPS involvement for their children. ? Study 1: Literature Review (Prepared for the Journal of Child and Adolescent Social Work) All studies related to pregnant and parenting mothers in foster care and their offspring published between 2011 and 2017 were identified by two reviewers using four search methods. Studies were included if findings were published by research entities, government agencies, or in a peer-reviewed journal. These studies provide a strong case for the need for leadership in child welfare to take on sexual and reproductive health interventions. Findings suggest that efforts that successfully delay pregnancies among girls in care would be associated with improved outcomes for both mothers and children. Studies focusing on parents in care detailed the need for comprehensive supportive services for parents that are tailored to address their unique parenting experiences and highlighted the resilience of these parents. Key solutions and next steps were described. ? Study 2: Linked, Administrative Data (Prepared for the Journal of Adolescent Health) Using probabilistically linked birth and CPS records from California, this population-based study examined all mothers who (1) gave birth before age 21 between 2009 and 2012 and (2) were in foster care on or after the estimated date of conception. Using a second data linkage, offspring born to identified mothers were followed for the first 3 years of life to assess CPS involvement. Between 2009 and 2012, 2,067 offspring born to mothers in foster care were identified. The data linkages revealed that 52.6% of all offspring experienced a CPS report by age 3 (n=1,102). Trends over time documented that offspring CPS involvement decreased while the proportion of mothers remaining in care at older ages increased. A Latent Class Analysis (LCA) was used to identify 3 distinct classes of mother-child dyads named (1) Non-minor mothers with long, stable placements, (2) Minor mothers with short placements, and (3) Mothers with long, unstable placements and mental health conditions. A second LCA included an offspring CPS report by age 3 as a distal outcome to examine the association between class membership and the risk of two-generation involvement. Class 1 was the lowest risk for a CPS report
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.012 | 0.011 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".