Brett Drake’s research while affiliated with Washington University in St. Louis and other places

Quantitative research plays an instrumental role in facilitating health and wellness. Effective interventions are developed, assessed, and refined through the application of logic and empirical evidence in a scientific milieu characterized by diverse views. However, the increasing colonization of academic discourse by postmodern/critical theory (PCT) may undermine foundational concepts upon which quantitative research rests. The postpositivist tradition in which quantitative methods are embedded emphasizes probabilistic truth, logic, empirical evidence, and the interplay of diverse, frequently conflicting perspectives. Conversely, some currents of thought within PCT emphasize multiple realities, intuition, personal stories of lived experience, and the exclusion of views that challenge PCT tenets. The increasing adoption of these concepts in academia may limit or even delegitimize quantitative research as currently practiced in social work. We conclude by arguing that social work clients are best served by a scientific discourse that values multiple theoretical frameworks, research methodologies, and scientists operating from different social locations.

Background: Poverty is among the most powerful predictors of child maltreatment risk and reporting. To date, however, there have been no studies assessing the stability of this relationship over time. Objective: To examine whether the county-level relationship between child poverty rates and child maltreatment report (CMR) rates changed over time in the United States in 2009-2018, overall and across of child age, sex, race/ethnicity, and maltreatment type. Participants and setting: U.S. Counties in 2009-2018. Methods: Linear multilevel models estimated this relationship and its longitudinal change, while controlling for potential confounding variables. Results: We found that the county-level relationship between child poverty rates and CMR rates had intensified almost linearly from 2009 to 2018. Per one-percentage-point increase in child poverty rates, CMR rates significantly increased by 1.26 per 1000 children in 2009 and by 1.74 per 1000 children in 2018, indicating an almost 40 % increase in the poverty-CMR relationship. This increasing trend was also found within all subgroups of child age and sex. This trend was found among White and Black children, but not among Latino children. This trend was strong among neglect reports, weaker among physical abuse reports, and not found among sexual abuse reports. Conclusions: Our findings highlight the continued, perhaps increasing importance of poverty as a predictor of CMR. To the degree that our findings can be replicated, they could be interpreted as supporting an increased emphasis on reducing child maltreatment incidents and reports through poverty amelioration efforts and the provision of material family supports.

The social work profession may be at a paradigmatic inflection point. Social work’s emphasis on evidence and scientific evaluation of knowledge is being challenged by what we term a “Postmodern/Critical Theory” perspective. To facilitate understanding of this crossroads and some of the issues involved, we trace the lineage of both perspectives and describe the core components of each. We conclude with a section laying out some of the advantages and disadvantages of either staying the “Empirical Highway” or taking the “Postmodern/Critical Off-Ramp”.

Child Protective Services (CPS) are a politically contentious area of practice and policy. While this is well known, no attempts have been made to understand differences in state level CPS systems as a function of state political orientation. We explore the bivariate and limited multivariate relationships between state political orientation (governorships, legislature and public voting patterns), CPS funding, the adoption of specific policies (differential response, drug policy, intimate partner violence policy, centralization and mandated reporting), system inputs (referral rate, percentage of reports from mandated sources, report types), and system outputs (percent screened in, percent substantiated and percent placed). We also explore the degree to which other state characteristics (wealth, rurality) are related to these outcomes. We find that political orientation has few associations with any of our dependent measures, and when present, such associations could plausibly related to state income and rurality measures, which did have consistent relationships to CPS functioning. Our approach found little indication that “Red” and “Blue” states differ markedly with regard to their CPS systems, and we include a series of suggestions for future research. We discuss the potential policy and practice implications of our findings.

Predictive risk modeling (PRM) is a new approach to data analysis that can be used to help identify risks of abuse and maltreatment among children. Several child welfare agencies have considered, piloted, or implemented PRM for this purpose. We discuss and analyze the application of PRM to child protection programs, elaborating on the various misgivings that arise from the application of predictive modeling to human behavior, and we present a framework to guide the application of PRM in child welfare systems. Our framework considers three core questions: (1) Is PRM more accurate than current practice? (2) Is PRM ethically equivalent or superior to current practice? and (3) Are necessary evaluative and implementation procedures established prior to, during, and following introduction of the PRM?

Current calls to end structural racism in the US include proposals to abolish or radically transform child welfare services (CWS). While substantial research finds numerous poor outcomes following maltreatment, the efficacy and acceptability of CWS, particularly for children of color, has long sparked debate. This review summarizes the state of quantitative research across seven domains for children overall and by race with varying degrees of CWS contact. Current research with adequate comparisons provides no robust evidence to support the idea that children have worse outcomes from CWS involvement, but few studies focused on Black children. Implications for research and system change are discussed.

Background Child maltreatment reports (CMR) are both common and strongly associated with various negative outcomes. Objective To examine CMR risks by child age, early childhood context, current/cumulative economic status (welfare receipt), race, and other risk factors with a longitudinal dataset. Participants and Setting The CAN sample included 2,111 children having a CMR ≤ age 3, suggestive of a harmful early childhood context. The AFDC sample included 1,923 children having AFDC but no CMR ≤ age 3, suggestive of early childhood protective factors despite poverty. Methods We estimated the CMR likelihood at each age from 1–17 years based on various risk factors while following up children from 1995–2009. Results During follow-up, CMR likelihoods were substantially higher for the CAN sample than for the AFDC sample. The age-CMR relationship was strongly negative for the CAN sample (OR = 0.87, 95% CI = 0.86–0.88). This relationship was weaker for the AFDC sample (OR = 0.92, 0.89–0.95) and became non-significant for children who exited welfare. Current welfare receipt remained a strong predictor of CMR likelihoods for both CAN (OR = 2.32, 1.98–2.71) and AFDC (OR = 2.08, 1.61–2.68) samples. Prior welfare receipt moderately increased CMR likelihoods among those not currently on welfare. Controlling for other risk factors, White children had the highest likelihood of CMR. Other child and parent level vulnerabilities also increased CMR risk over time. Conclusions This study highlights the importance of longitudinal analytic approaches and the utility of cross-sector administrative data in improving our ability to understand and predict CMRs over time.