Poster #137 - Variations in child welfare policies & the geography of child neglect investigations: a national two-wave panel study

• In Event: Friday Poster Reception

Abstract

Background: Material hardship, or the inability to afford basic necessities including food, housing, utilities, and medical care, is a growing public health concern in the U.S. A portion of families facing hardship are reported to and investigated by the child welfare system for allegations of neglect, through which determinations are made as to whether responsibility for economic circumstances and resource constraints lies with the caregiver or rests with environmental circumstances beyond their control. Whether and how these determinations are made, however, is shaped in part by the statutory environments in which families live, as neglect investigation rates vary substantially within and across states. Prior work suggests that differences in state child welfare policies and practices partially account for this variation, yet less is known about how policy structures interact to shape patterns in neglect investigations or whether the presence or absence of specific statutes facilitate discretionary decision-making in ways that produce systematic variation in child welfare exposure within states.
Objective: The present study addresses these gaps by examining associations between state policy dynamics, neighborhood deprivation, and neglect investigation risk across the United States to elucidate why, where, and for whom hardship experiences result in child welfare system contact. 
Methods: Data were obtained from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) Child File and Census data from 2019 and 2023 to construct a county-level neglect investigation risk - the estimated annual probability that a child residing in a given county will be subject to a neglect investigation - for all eligible counties across 46 states. I will then link county-level neglect investigation risk with state policy variables from the SCAN Policies Database and a content analysis of state definitions from Rebbe (2018), along with composite measures of neighborhood deprivation from the Child Opportunity Index 3.0. Using two-level multilevel models, I examine whether combinations of state policy characteristics in 2019 shape higher, lower, and more variable neglect investigation risks within states, and whether associations differ by the severity of neighborhood deprivation and inequality as well as by racial/ethnic composition. I then conduct a two-part temporal analysis: a sensitivity analysis examining whether 2019 policy-investigation associations hold in 2023 among states with stable policy environments and a quasi-experimental analysis examining whether changes in state policy characteristics between 2019 and 2023 correspond to changes in county neglect investigation risk.
Implications: With child poverty on the rise, this study offers timely evidence on how the architecture of state child welfare law determines where and for whom experiences of hardship result in child welfare system contact in ways that perpetuate systematic marginalization through carceral intervention. Findings from this work identify specific policy levers for reducing investigative burdens on families and communities most at risk.

Author

• Lauren Elizabeth Wright, University of Pennsylvania
  Presenting Author