Recurrence of Allegations
Notes on Data Source
This safety measure reflects the percentage of children who were subjects of a child maltreatment allegation within a 6 month period for whom there were additional maltreatment allegations during the subsequent 6, 12, 18 and 24 month time periods. The allegations are available by disposition types. The denominator is the count of children with a specified disposition type on the first allegation reported during the 6 month base period; the numerator is the count of the children in the denominator who had at least one additional allegation in the 6, 12, 18 or 24 month period following the initial allegation.
The user may specify whether Federal requirements on disposition date and allegation “risk” types are to be met on the second screen. If Federal disposition date standards are applied, only allegations with a disposition occurring within 6, 12, 18 or 24 months (depending on the recurrence time period selected) of the last day of the base time period are included. If Federal allegation type standards are applied, allegation codes: 5001, "At risk, sibling abused" and 5624, "Substantial risk" are excluded. Incoming ICPC children always are excluded.
Note that if the Federal standards are not applied the number of base and subsequent allegations will be greater as will the proportion of base allegations with subsequent allegations. The distribution of base allegations and other referral characteristics will also be different.
One allegation is included for each referral. Linked referrals are combined to form a single referral consisting of the primary referral, any referral(s) associated with a primary referral and any other referral on the same child received within one day. If the allegations in the combined referral are different or if they have different dispositions, the allegation with the most serious disposition type is retained in the following order: substantiated, inconclusive, unfounded and assessment only. If there is more than one allegation with the same level of disposition, the most severe allegation type is retained according to the allegation type severity hierarchy established by CWS/CMS (see additional details in the “Allegation Type” link provided below). In the following paragraphs the term “allegation” refers to the single allegation for each referral, or combined referral, identified using this process.
The user may limit the denominator to base allegations that did not result
in the child’s removal from the home, thus providing recurrence rates only
for children who remained in the home after the base allegation. Thus the
following children are excluded:
Children who were already placed out of home on the date of their base allegation,
Children who are placed out of home after the base allegation, but more than 2 days* before a subsequent allegation, and
Children who do not have a subsequent allegation, but who are placed out of home within 30 months of the first day of the base period.
* Placements occurring no more than 2 days before a subsequent allegation
are not considered because of possible delays in the allegation reporting
The denominator includes first allegation for each child in the base period that meets the disposition data and allegation type requirements as described above. Each child is reported no more than once in each base period and the first reported allegation is not necessarily the allegation with the most serious disposition type and/or most severe allegation in the base period. Therefore, the selected allegations are essentially a sample of the allegations that occurred during the base period, and this sample will be refreshed each quarter. For the subsequent allegations, all allegations in referrals received during the selected time period ending 6, 12, 18 or 24 months after the base referral was received are considered. From those allegations, the allegation with the most serious disposition type and, within that group, the most severe allegation type is selected. This process is distinct for each base period disposition class.
This differs from other allegation reports and for this reason the
reports are not directly comparable.
Users also have the option to limit the denominator to first allegations.
An inflated proportion of allegations are identified as 'first ever' in
early base periods, since data include children born before 1998, the first
year that data are available. For example, a child with what seems to be a
first referral in 1998 may have had a referral in 1996. For this reason,
when the option 'Limit Report to First Allegation' is selected, base
periods available for display start with Jan-Jun 2000.
For summary tables, the total of all counties will usually be higher than the total for California, since a child may have had referrals in more than one county during the base period.
County is assigned in this analysis using the county specific code from the assignment table corresponding with the referral received date during the specified six month base period. Age in this analysis is based on the first referral received date during the specified base period.
In the Multiple Time Period analyses, columns with no data are not displayed in report output. Please note that this may result in unusual table structure for queries involving small counties or other small frequency counts.
Note: Cells containing a period (".") represent a value of zero. In cells representing quotients, a period may also indicate the indeterminate form 0/0.
This measure may also be run with filters in place to restrict the data to various subgroups of other variables (e.g., Black subgroup of the Ethnicity variable,<1 year old subgroup of the Age variable, etc.). The age variable applies to the age at the time of the base referral.
Base Allegation Type
Base Reporter Type