NCJ Number
166634
Editor(s)
S Bruchey
Date Published
1995
Length
174 pages
Annotation
Child abuse reporting in an urban area was examined from the perspectives of the medical and nonmedical reporters of abuse, based on data from Baltimore.
Abstract
Data came from 576 alleged child abuse reports randomly selected from 2,870 alleged child abuse reports made to the Baltimore City Department of Social Services during 1984. The analysis focused on the characteristics of the reported children and their families, the type and severity of the alleged perpetrators, the alleged perpetrators, the socioeconomic status of the family's area of residence, and the disposition of the child abuse report. Results revealed that the report characteristics and dispositions are related to the reporting sources. Medical sources more often reported children with visible physical injuries; children who are young, black, and male; situations where perpetrators were people other than the mother or father; and cases where the child lived in a poverty area. Reports from nonmedical sources identified children with no visible physical injuries, older children, white and other race children, children with mothers as the alleged perpetrators, and children from non-poverty areas. The reports from medical sources were more often substantiated than those from a nonmedical source. Results indicate the crucial positions that various social systems at both micro and macro levels have on reporting and the investigation of abuse and offer an additional framework for examining the reporting behavior of various reporters in the community child protection network. Tables, appended methodological information and additional results, index, and 114 references