Early assessment of the risk of child welfare involvement for preventive purposes

•The aim was predicting the risk of child welfare involvement using a big data approach.•Demographic, socioeconomic, and criminal history factors were tested as risk factors.•An accumulation of risk factors is highly predictive of child welfare involvement.•The risk of child welfare measures rises exponentially with number of risk factors.•Several specific factors contribute to the risk prediction above risk accumulation. To prevent child welfare involvement by timely referring families to preventive interventions, it is essential to assess the risk of child welfare involvement in the general population as early as possible. To examine whether child welfare involvement can be predicted by demographic, socioeconomic, and criminal history factors. Data of 131,532 children and their parents were retrieved from Statistics Netherlands. Child welfare involvement comprised supervision orders, court-imposed guardianship, and/or out-of-home placements, that started in the year following the assessment of risk factors. AUC values were calculated to establish the predictive validity of individual factors for future child welfare involvement. A decision tree classification technique with a split-sample validation approach was used to develop and validate a predictive model. An accumulation of risk factors proved to be highly predictive of child welfare involvement in the year following the assessment of the risk factors. The risk increased exponentially as the number of risk factors increases. The presence of four or more risk factors yielded a 10 times higher risk for child welfare involvement, and the presence of six or more risk factors yielded a 21 times higher risk relative to the absence of risk factors. The predictive model showed that above an accumulation of risk factors, the presence of specific risk factors further increased the risk. Both the predictive model and the mere accumulation of risk factors can help professionals to estimate the risk of future child welfare involvement, which is important for timely referring families to preventive interventions or assistance.