Early identification of individual, parent and family related factors associated with different levels of youth care services

Intensive youth care (out-of-home care and repeated outpatient care) is often provided to children with complex and persistent difficulties and is associated with adverse later outcomes. In order to reduce the escalation of care needs by timely referring to lighter forms of youth care, it is essential to differentiate children according to their risk for these intensive types of youth care. The aim of this study is to examine whether individual, parental, and family-related factors are differentially associated with light and intensive forms of youth care. Register data of 15,116 children and their parents was retrieved from Statistics Netherlands. The use of youth care was divided into three ordered levels; none, light and intensive. Ordinal logistic regression analyses were used to assess the association between individual, parent and family related factors at age 0-4 and the use of youth care at age 5-8. Of all included children, 2,565 (17%) used youth care between age 5-8, of which 534 (21%) received intensive forms. Sex, migrant background, parental educational level, parental unemployment, and parental delinquency showed a differential association with the use of intensive forms of youth care. Girls and children with a Moroccan or non-Western background were less likely to receive intensive forms of youth care, while children from parents whose educational level is unknown, parents with delinquent behavior and unemployed parents were more likely to receive intensive forms of youth care, compared to not receiving youth care or receiving light forms. The findings of this study suggest that already early in life child and parent-factors are differentially associated with light and intensive forms of youth care. This could help professionals to identify high-risk children and families, and timely deploy targeted preventive interventions.