Do maltreated children who remain at home function better than those who are placed?

The majority of children in the child welfare system remain with their maltreating parents, yet little is known about their level of functioning and whether they are in need of mental health intervention. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the mental health functioning of an ethnically diverse sample of 302 maltreated children and 151 non maltreated children ages 9–12 to see if there were differences between those who remained at home, those placed in kin care, non-relative foster care or a comparison group of children who were not maltreated. Children were evaluated on multiple measures of mental health functioning, both self report and caregiver report. Results showed that the maltreated children did not differ by placement type but did score significantly higher than the comparison children on many measures. There were substantial numbers of maltreated children scoring in the clinical range of measures in all placement types with over 60% of those remaining with birth parents being seen as functioning at a level that indicated a need for mental health intervention. While fewer comparison children had scores indicating a need for mental health care, the numbers were higher than noted in national studies. Implications of the findings are presented.