Home > The Risk and Prevention of Maltreatment of Children with Disabilities > The Risk and Prevention of Maltreatment of Children with Disabilities : What is the Scope of the Problem?

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The Risk and Prevention of Maltreatment of Children with Disabilities
Bulletin for Professionals

Author(s):  Child Welfare Information Gateway

Year Published:  2001

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What is the Scope of the Problem?

Researchers have had difficulty estimating rates of maltreatment among children with disabilities. One reason is that States do not collect the same data about maltreated children in the same ways. Another reason is that researchers identify disabilities among maltreated children in different ways.

Maltreatment is generally defined using the Federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) definition¹, but States vary in their guidelines used to substantiate, or identify, maltreatment. Disability is generally defined using the Federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)², but only 19 States record pre-existing disabilities on their Child Protective Services (CPS) forms (Bonner, Crow & Hensley, 1997), so researchers must use other means to identify disabilities among children who have been maltreated. Given these difficulties, "The real extent of the problem . . . remains a frightening unknown" (Mitchell & Buchele-Ash, 2000, p. 227).

Nonetheless, available research has found that children with disabilities are more vulnerable to maltreatment than children without disabilities. The only national study conducted to date (Crosse, Kaye & Ratnofsky, n.d.), was completed in 1993. The study found that children with disabilities were 1.7 times more likely to be maltreated than children without disabilities. Crosse et al. used data from NIS-2, the second congressionally mandated National Incidence Study of child maltreatment. (NIS-1 was completed in 1980, NIS-2 in 1988, and NIS-3 in 1996.) The Crosse et al. study indicated that while 21.3 per 1,000 children without disabilities are maltreated each year, 35.5 per 1,000 children with disabilities are maltreated each year. Put another way, approximately 175,000 to 300,000 U.S. children with disabilities are maltreated each year, if it is estimated that between 9 percent and 15 percent of all children in the United States have a disability of some kind.

Crosse et al. acknowledge that their study may underestimate the incidence of maltreatment of children with disabilities. A study conducted in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1997 found that children with disabilities were 3.4 times more likely to be maltreated than were children without disabilities (Sullivan & Knutson, in press). Although the Omaha study did not use a national sample, its findings underscore the need for more research on the scope of the problem.

These are the only two recent studies that have attempted to measure the scope of the problem. (Twenty-two studies were conducted in the United States between 1967 and 1992 [Sobsey, 1994], but this document addresses only the most current research.) To assist in understanding their findings, it is helpful to understand a little about their methodology. Table 1 presents some of this information.

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Updated on July 3, 2008