Over the past few years, caseworkers in Child Protection Centres in Quebec have noticed a recurrence of referrals for a significant number of children over time. Recent estimates of recurrence for children who received child protection services (CPS) range from 18 % to 60 %. Most studies base their rate on small samples or cases referred over a short period of time, and not on cohorts of CPS-evaluated children. The focus of this study is to estimate the recurrence rate using data from 5 cohorts of children referred and evaluated (n=8738) by a CPS between 1998 and 2002. Results show that 24.5 % of substantiated cases had been evaluated in the past by CPS, and one out of six children (15.8 %) had received CPS services. Boys, children in the 13-17 age group and cases referred for neglect or abandonment showed the highest recurrence rate.