It has been my privilege to serve as Div. 37’s Section on Child Maltreatment president over these past few years. As my term ends, I find myself reflecting on the opportunities for growth that the position has afforded. Most notably has been the time I have deliberately carved out of my busy schedule to really digest, understand, and purposely comment on specific policies that have direct relevance for the health of families, child welfare and safety, and the field as a whole. Presidential forums at APA, the various policy workshops that we have sponsored, the pieces of legislation on which the division has provided comment, and these presidential columns are prime venues that I would have not otherwise engaged if not for the being so intimately involved in the section. And I have had the privilege of working closely with some amazing people (thank you, Jen Kaminski and Karen Carmody, to name two!) who have been generative with their knowledge and patient with me while getting up to speed. In the spirit of this reflection, I’d like to take this last column to really dig into a topic that might not be an obvious segue from the policy issues that we have taken on over the past few years: child welfare data expunction and destruction.
The federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) requires that states have procedures in place to “facilitate the prompt expungement” of unsubstantiated or false records that would be accessible to the public or used for background check purposes (42 U.S. Code § 5106b(2)(B)(xii)). Understandably so, this statue was enacted to protect the wrongly accused by preventing the release of information that could be used to preclude employment, block volunteerism or working with children and other activities where background checks are mandatory. However, nothing in this section prevents states from retaining information on unsubstantiated reports or prevents the use of these data “to assist in future risk and safety assessments.” This caveat is important because the practice of destroying protective services investigative records can have implications for how child welfare workers approach cases, use data to both protect themselves and the children they serve, and evaluate the effectiveness of programs and services.
For example, prior case files can assist in protecting children by improving initial assessments of risk and in designing safety plans. Prior data can be used when following cases across jurisdictions, identifying potential adoptive families, and locating missing children. When expunged investigative records require reconstructing, efficiency is decreased and the potential for case worker burnout is increased in a system where turnover is costly and common. Child welfare services cannot be adequately evaluated for efficacy and cost-effectiveness if prior records for families who do not meet substantiation thresholds are absent. Finally, there is convincing research demonstrating that children involved in protective service investigations, regardless of substantiation, are at risk for poor academic performance, juvenile delinquency, teen pregnancy, and other costly public health outcomes (Kohl et. al., 2009; Kugler et. al., 2018). It is therefore important to recognize that targeting children involved in unsubstantiated cases can improve prevention efforts for a host of maladies that impact the health and well-being of vulnerable children.
CAPTA is a perfect example of how a federal policy can be interpreted quite disparately across states in ways that can have tangible effects on child safety. Despite CAPTA provisions that allow states to retain records for case management, states have adopted varying practices related to expunction, and there is no consensus as to the optimal interpretation of the statute. For example, Florida retains reports and records of all cases pertaining to a family until the child reaches 30 years of age. Maryland allows for retention of suspected child abuse reports that were screened out for up to two years, allows the maintenance of unsubstantiated cases for five years, and has no statutory expunction for indicated cases where there is credible evidence that abuse occurred. Perhaps on the more stringent end of the CAPTA interpretation, Pennsylvania defines expunction as: “To strike out or obliterate entirely so that the expunged information may not be stored, identified or later recovered by any mechanical or electronic means or otherwise.” Taking this further, General Protective Services cases that are “determined to be valid, but are not accepted for services” are required to be expunged within five years.
Recognizing that the deletion of critical historical information has created unforeseen problems in Pennsylvania by precluding the use of record data to mitigate risk, a group of county administrators coalesced around this issue in attempt to bring awareness to these problems. This group contacted me and requested that my Penn State Center for Healthy Children compile published research that would help educate legislators about the impact of investigations on child development and the usefulness of child welfare data to aid in risk and safety planning. We were able to put together policy briefs and attend meetings with key committee members to help answer any questions and address concerns. As a direct result of this collaborative effort, Pennsylvania recently enacted legislation (HB 1232, June 28, 2018) to allow county discretion over the destruction of expunged records that may be used “to assist in future risk and safety assessments and research.” This experience is a prime example of how researchers can work together with front-line child welfare professionals to provide educational support for mobilization and legislative change.
Given the wide variation in CAPTA’s expunction statute interpretation, there is ample opportunity to advocate for common sense expunction laws within many states. Minnesota is one such example. Their law requires a five-year retention of reports that were either not investigated or were not substantiated. Minnesota also adds that such records cannot be used for employment, background checks, or purposes other than to assist in future screening decisions and risk and safety assessments. As such, I would encourage all of us to be aware of expunction laws in our states and to engage in opportunities to help advocate for reform (i.e., when laws either disallow the use of data to inform investigations for children who have been re-referred after an unsubstantiated report, or handicap efforts to make full use of administrative data to target at-risk populations for preventive services). Although the spirit of expunction statutes — to protect the identity of alleged perpetrators who have been exonerated — should indeed be upheld, policies should also strike a careful balance that protects and adequately serves vulnerable and at-risk children.
References
Kohl, P. L., Jonson-Reid, M., & Drake, B. (2009). Time to leave substantiation behind: Findings from a national probability study. Child Maltreatment, 14, 17-26.
Kugler, K.C., Guastaferro, K., Shenk, C.E., Beal, S.J., Zadzora, K.M., & Noll, J. G. (2018). The effect of substantiated and unsubstantiated investigations of child maltreatment and subsequent adolescent health. Child Abuse & Neglect. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2018.06.005