1. Child Deaths and Domestic Violence Tanya Bruning

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

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

4. Research purpose Domestic Violence (DV) Child neglect Child physical abuse

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. More DV Children more likely to die More likely to die from physical abuse Gender More boys died More boys died from physical abuse

6. Frequency of DV? Severity of DV? Gender of child? Number of siblings?

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

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

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

10. Findings

11. Findings More frequent DV? More severe DV? Living or deceased? No significant difference

12. Findings More frequent DV? More severe DV? Physically abused or neglected? No significant difference

13. Predictive factors? Deceased or living? More severe DV? Gender More frequent DV? Number of siblings? Child is more likely to live than to die when reported more frequently for DV.

14. Alleged perpetrators of physical abuse

15. Child Abuse or neglect Homelessness Substance abuse Mental Illness Criminal activity Poverty Domestic Violence 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 Child protection is a ‘wicked problem’ Wicked problems not readily lent to experimental design Lack of clarity and research about how DV and child abuse ‘behave’

18. Conclusion More research Exploring causal and predictive qualities of risk factors Develop measures For greater accuracy to judge which children are at serious and immediate risk Direct resources To the children most in need

19. Questions?