Child Protective Service Involvement and Parental Economic Precarity

• In Event: Economic Insecurity and CPS Involvement: Bidirectional Risks and Policy Levers

Abstract

Background: CPS involvement and income poverty are closely linked, with growing evidence that poverty plays a causal role in CPS involvement (Thomas et al., 2023). Ensuring that such involvement does not increase economic strain for families could reduce repeated CPS involvement and produce a host of other well-documented benefits to child and family well-being (Brooks-Gunn & Duncan, 1997). Extant research on consequences of CPS involvement for parents is limited and has primarily focused on short-term outcomes, such as service participation, and parenting outcomes, such as maltreatment-related behaviors and repeated CPS involvement (Fuller et al., 2013). The current project expands our understanding of the impacts of CPS systems by exploring how parents’ economic well-being is impacted by their involvement with CPS systems. There is a nascent body of evidence indicating that CPS involvement negatively influences parents’ financial well-being through impacts on public benefit receipt, employment challenges, and child support payments if children enter foster care (e.g., Berger et al., 2024; Cancian et al., 2017; Hook et al., 2016; Sedlak et al., 2010). We build on this literature by providing direct qualitative evidence from parents on the economic consequences of their CPS involvement.

Methods: This small sample pilot project addressed one central question: what are the economic consequences of child protective service involvement for parents impacted by this system? We conducted 10 initial, in-depth qualitative interviews with child welfare-impacted parents in one midwestern state and employed thematic analysis, using open and closed coding techniques. We are actively collecting additional data, building on this pilot.

Results: Initial results indicate that CPS-impacted parents experienced direct and indirect economic consequences from involvement with this system. These included two direct financial consequences: (1) expenses incurred while navigating the system, including legal costs and transportation costs, and (2) child support enforcement costs if children entered foster care. We also find two indirect economic impacts driven by CPS involvement: (1) lost public benefits and services, and (2) work scheduling conflicts and labor force stigma associated with navigating CPS processes. Parents typically incurred more than one of these four financial consequences at once, with cumulating hardships resulting in fewer resources for the provision of quality care during visitations with their children and a delayed capacity to reunite with their children.

Discussion: Findings from this work suggest that involvement with CPS may exacerbate financial hardships for parents, and that the increased economic precarity associated with navigating this system is detrimental to family well-being and stability. These results indicate a clear need to consider the economic impacts of CPS involvement in future evaluations of child welfare policy and practice, as the system’s financial impacts are contradictory to its stated aims of family preservation. Moreover, the findings suggest promising policy and practice changes which could potentially reduce the detrimental economic consequences of child welfare involvement for families, such as eliminating the practice of charging child support to parents for foster care removals and improving work scheduling predictability for low-wage workers.

Author

• Melanie L Nadon, Wayne State University
  Presenting Author