Factors affecting placement decisions of children following short-term emergency care

Case files of 424 residents at an emergency treatment center for abused and neglected children were used to generate a beginning set of variables which, in combination, predicted whether or not children from the center would be discharged to their natural family environment. Variables with descending order of predictive significance were place from which the child was admitted, the length of time spent in treatment, the age and the race of the child, Other variables--the number of siblings, the child's sex and the presence of physical/sexual abuse--did not approach significance.