Child abuse and neglect recurs with children at home after intervention.

Hamilton -- Children who remain in their homes after being abused or neglected by their parents, or are returned to those homes after intervention by social services agencies are at a high risk for further neglect or abuse within three years, says a study by McMaster University Medical Faculty. The study was reported in the British medical journal, The Lancet.

The study team was headed by Professor Harriet Macmillan, Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioural Neurosciences and Pediatrics. They conclude there is no intervention proven to reduce the risk of abuse or neglect when children who have been abused remain in the home.

The team examined 163 Canadian families with a confirmed history of child abuse or neglect. The families were treated in two groups:

One group received the usual child protection services, including routine follow-up by case workers and education in parenting. A 51 per cent recurrence rate of neglect of their children and a 43 per cent recurrence of physical abuse were reported within three years of the first recorded incident.

The second group received regular home visits from public health nurses in addition to the standard child protection services. A third of these children also suffered neglect within three years from the first reported incident.

"The high rates of recurrence in this study suggests that substantive efforts must be invested in prevention of child abuse or neglect before a pattern is established," said Professor MacMillan.

The McMillan study confirms the findings of researchers in Wales who reported last summer that nearly one in three babies, who were returned to their parents after investigations for child abuse or neglect, suffered more injury and neglect within three years of that return.

Jane Warlow from Warwick University in Britain, provided a comment in The Lancet, stating that "there is little evidence currently available about how to prevent this abuse from happening without removing the child from the home."

As well, Warlow noted that "the benefits of standard services are, for the better part, not known," but McMillan stressed that most of those standard services that she was familiar with "fall seriously short of the sort of service" that was evaluated in the study.