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Children who are subject to an investigated report in United States

Children who are subject to an investigated report

The Annie E. Casey Foundation from datacenter.aecf.org

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Definition and Source

PROVIDER

Definition

This indicator represents the number of unduplicated child records for children ages 0-17, that were subject to an investigated report. An investigated report is a report of alleged child abuse and neglect that received a Child Protective Services (CPS) response. Cases of maltreatment where the child was not yet born are not included. State estimates are shown only for states with completed reports that resulted in a disposition (or finding) as an outcome of the CPS response during the reporting year. 
It is important to note that these numbers only represent children who came to the attention of authorities through a report of maltreatment. Because of this, and because of state differences in policies and practices—including variations in the legal definitions of maltreatment—readers should exercise caution in interpreting trends and in making state-to-state comparisons.

Child Fatalities
In the publicly-available NCANDS file, state names are suppressed on records dealing with child fatalities to protect confidentiality. Prior to 2010, fatalities were included in our national totals. Beginning in 2010, our national total includes fatalities if they also had a prior investigation report that was not associated with a fatality, but otherwise fatalities are excluded. We made this exclusion because it is not possible in the public-use file to identify which of the children who died also have a record indicating a prior maltreatment investigation. We also found that this approach yields national totals that are closer to the Children’s Bureau’s estimates (i.e., national totals are more likely to be overestimated when fatalities are included).

Data Source

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Administration on Children, Youth and Families, Children’s Bureau. National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) Child File, FFY 2000–2022.

U.S. Census Bureau. "Annual Estimates of the Resident Population by Single Year of Age and Sex for the United States, States, and Puerto Rico Commonwealth: April 1, 2010 to July 1, 2022," Vintage 2022.

NCANDS data are used with the permission of Cornell University’s National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect website, http://www.ndacan.cornell.edu. The collector of the original data, the funding agency, NDACAN, Cornell University, and the agents or employees of these institutions bear no responsibility for the analyses or interpretations presented here.


 

Notes

Due to missing state data, national totals are not provided before 2004.
National estimates after 2005 include Puerto Rico.
N.R. - No data are reported.

Last Updated

March 2024