Ain’t Nobody Got Time for Dad? Racial Disproportionalities in Child Welfare Casework with Nonresident Fathers

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  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 20: Social Service Workers Navigating Race

Abstract

Background: As cultural norms have come to prescribe involved, nurturing fathering, U.S. child welfare agencies have placed greater emphasis on including fathers in casework practice. With this, researchers have explored the impacts of involving fathers and have begun to identify factors that impact agency efforts to involve fathers. Race-ethnic inequality and bias are not among factors studied, despite evidence that racial-ethnic minority children make up a disproportionate share of the population of children in foster care. Objective: We set out to identify race-ethnic patterns in initial casework activity with nonresident fathers. Participants and Setting: Caseworkers of 1,631 children in foster care in four U.S. states were surveyed. Methods: Logistic regression analyses examine factors associated with whether agencies identified, located, and contacted nonresident fathers. Results: Black and Latino fathers were less likely to be contacted in multiple U.S. states, relative to White nonresident fathers. Fathers’ international geographic mobility reduced differentials in contact to nonsignificance for Latinx children. Other system, father, and family characteristics were associated with contact, but did not explain racial-ethnic differentials. Conclusion: There likely exist racial-ethnic disproportionalities in nonresident father involvement in U.S. child welfare systems. These are likely brought about by within-system and outside-of-system processes that vary geographically and by race-ethnic group. More recent national data are needed, so that we may better understand racial-ethnic differentials in children’s access to social resources and the role of father-system interactions in bringing these about.

Authors

• Julia M. Arroyo, University of Florida

• Barbara Zsembik, University of Florida

• Charles Peek, University of Florida