Assessing the association between multiple parental alcohol events and the risk of being maltreated children in a New Zealand population-based birth cohort.

Abstract

Background and aims: Child maltreatment is an important component of alcohol's harm to others. No previous studies have assessed the association between multiple parental alcohol events and child maltreatment. This study aimed to measure the impact of parental alcohol-attributable events on the incidence rate of child maltreatment events over the span of childhood and adolescence in New Zealand.

Design, setting and participants: Longitudinal analysis using the birth cohort data of all live births (n = 58 359) in New Zealand in 2000, with the cohort followed until age 17 years using linked data from the Statistics New Zealand Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) from 1995 to 2017.

Measurements: Zero-inflated negative binomial and count regression models were used to measure the association between the number of child maltreatment events [collected from publicly funded hospital discharges, Programme for the Integration of Mental Health Data (PRIMHD), Oranga Tamariki, Children's Action Plan (CAP) and police data sets] and parental exposure to alcohol-attributable hospitalization or service use for mental health/addiction. Potential confounders were included for parents and children.

Findings: Of 58 359 children in the cohort, 86% (50 319) had not experienced any documented maltreatment events. Among those at risk of being maltreated children, the maltreatment incidence rate ratio increased by 35.2% (95% confidence interval = 18.1-55.6%) if a child was exposed to parental alcohol-attributable hospitalization or service use for mental health addiction events. For each additional parental alcohol-attributable hospitalization or service use for mental health or addiction, the risk of being maltreated children increased by 12.8%.

Conclusions: In New Zealand, hazardous alcohol consumption by parents appears to be associated with child maltreatment alongside other contributing factors, in particular parental lower educational attainment.