Child Deaths and Domestic Violence

1. Child Deaths and Domestic Violence Tanya Bruning

2. Session Overview • Why? Reason for the research • What? Brief methodology • So what? Implications

3. Once upon a time… How can we support staff to identify serious risk better? Girl met boy … and the child died with a head injury.

4. Research purpose

5. Hypotheses Designed to test whether frequency or severity of DV could be used to determine if a child would die and/or how they would die.

6. What factors predict fatalities? Frequency of DV? Severity of DV? Gender of child? Number of siblings?

7. Method • 79 deceased children • Age matched with living children • 79 living children • Reported to Community Services

8. Details about deceased children • 42 died from physical abuse • 37 died from supervisory neglect • 51 were male • 28 were female

9. Frequency of DV measured via the number of reports to Community Services about DV Severity of DV USAF measure: low, medium and high severity

10. Findings

11. Findings No significant difference

12. Findings No significant difference

13. Predictive factors? Child is more likely to live than to die when reported more frequently for DV.

14. Alleged perpetrators of physical abuse

15. So what?

16. Implications Previous research: as violence becomes more chronic and severe so does child abuse Relationship may not be linear May be no method to predict death Multiple models of abuse and neglect

17. Summary

18. Conclusion

19. Questions?