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Kimber Malmgren

June 2005

Early contacts with child welfare agencies or special education programs often do not act as protective factors for students with emotional and behavioral disorders because contact with these agencies is not sufficiently early, comprehensive, or coordinated across agencies.

A study by UW-Madison education professor Kimber Malmgren and colleague Sheri Meisel supports a large body of research that identifies early childhood as a critical developmental period when emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) can be prevented or ameliorated.

Youth with EBD who are involved with multiple service agencies experience multiple risk factors in childhood. These risk factors include academic and behavioral problems, experience with abuse and neglect, high rates of mobility, and parental incarceration. These characteristics have been consistently associated with negative school and community outcomes that extend into adulthood.

Children and adolescents with EBD often have multiple and intensive needs that reduce their ability to function in a variety of settings. These overlapping needs make collaboration critical among the public agencies that serve youth with EBD. Thus, many state and county agencies coordinate efforts and combine resources to create care systems and other programs to serve these youth.

Malmgren’s study focused on a special education program, a child welfare agency, and a juvenile justice agency in a northeastern U.S. suburban school district. The study’s interagency focus provides an important systemic perspective to understand the characteristics of youth at risk for EBD and their trajectory toward identification and receipt of specialized public services.

For most youth, behavior problems were cited as a reason for the initial referral for special education services. Only 5.6% of the students in the study were initially referred for special education on the basis of academic problems alone. An additional 22.5% were initially referred into special education because of a combination of behavioral and academic difficulties.

More than half of youth in the study were labeled EBD when they were first determined eligible for special education. The average age of these youth at initial identification was 11.4 years.

Records in the juvenile justice system studied showed evidence of substance abuse among 43.3% of the youth in the study. Examination of this variable by ethnicity showed disproportionately more documentation of substance abuse for African American participants: 55.3% of African American participants’ case files compared to 33.3% of the White participants’ files.

Juvenile justice records also indicated that 15.6% of participants had parents or siblings incarcerated at some point prior to the study.

Child welfare case records showed evidence of abuse or neglect among youth in the study. Of the youth with child welfare case records, 49% experienced physical abuse, 29.4% experienced sexual abuse, and 75% experienced neglect. According to the records, 93.1% of the African American participants had experienced neglect, compared to 55.6% of the White and 40% of the Hispanic participants.

Prior to the special education referral process, 48.8% of youth in the study experienced difficulties or delays in multiple academic areas. An additional 16.7% experienced academic problems in a single area prior to referral. It is noteworthy, Malmgren says, that in 35.3% of the cases no academic problems were documented prior to referral for special education

Special education case records also showed that 91.7% of the participants experienced conduct problems in school prior to referral for special education.

Of all participants, 35.2% had been retained in grade at least once during their academic careers. Of these youth, 59.1% were retained in the primary grades.

Student mobility a factor

Malmgren says that interagency prevention strategies should be directed at children before age 6 (when 25% of the study’s participants were already identified by at least one agency) and certainly before age 8 (when over 50% were already identified).

She calls “worrisome” the finding that younger ages of identification by child welfare or special education correlated with younger ages of first contact with juvenile justice. In other words, early contact with child welfare or special education did not act as a protective factor.

Regardless of ethnicity, females tended to be identified at a later age than males, in all three agencies. Malmgren says this pattern denotes either differential treatment (i.e., authorities turning a blind eye to female emotional or behavioral problems) or different patterns of development with regard to EBD.

For most of the youth, eligibility for public school special education was the initial entry point into the public agency system. A large majority of youth experienced behavioral difficulties, and more than half experienced academic problems in multiple areas, in the early school years (i.e., prior to special education referral). These problems likely contributed to their high rates of suspension and retention, Malmgren says.

Regardless of ethnicity, participants experienced high rates of school mobility both before and after referral for special education. Prior to referral, this effect was more pronounced for African American and Hispanic youth than for White youth. After referral, over 70% of all participants attended more than one school in an academic year. This finding suggests that school mobility should be considered a significant risk factor that may be associated with the development of academic and behavior problems in childhood and adolescence.

Findings from the same study focus on the high rates of mobility experienced by these students and resulting negative academic outcomes; “School Mobility and Students with Emotional Disturbance,” (in press).

Taken together, the findings that participants had high rates of mobility, suspension, and chronic attendance problems suggest limited opportunities for consistent involvement in school. Malmgren calls these findings troubling because high-risk youth benefit from strong attachment to schooling and to adult mentors in school environments.

This research was jointly funded by the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Justice.

This material appeared in different form in the Journal of Child and Family Studies, Vol. 11, No. 2, June 2002, pp. 217–229.