The role of prevention services in the county context of child maltreatment

A growing body of literature has investigated the effects of living in certain neighborhoods on child maltreatment. Relatively few (5) studies to date have utilized methods that adequately account for clustering within neighborhoods. None of these studies accounted for the availability of local child maltreatment prevention services - the very programs that were put in place to address the problem of maltreatment. This study investigates the role of the availability of child maltreatment prevention programs in individual-level risk for maltreatment. A multi-level analysis was conducted using county-level information on child maltreatment prevention program spending, census information on county characteristics, and individual-level data on individual risks for maltreatment and maltreatment behaviors. Results show that controlling for individual- and county-level risks for maltreatment, the amount a county spends on maltreatment prevention programs is associated with lower odds of maltreatment at the individual level.