In July, I had the honor of attending the White House Child Welfare Transformation Convening focused on preventing family separation, and disconnecting poverty from maltreatment and neglect in child protection. Here is what I learned: Everyone working on child and family well-being must link arms with people working in child protection and child welfare to prevent unnecessary family separation.
Most ECFC members would not consider themselves “child welfare funders” and yet every topic in child welfare transformation would resonate with ECFC members:
- How do we prevent the trauma of unnecessary family separation and promote early relational health?
- Why do we not offer the same financial support, respite care, and therapeutic support to keep families together that we offer to foster families? How is this linked to a history of family surveillance and racism, classism, and colonialism?
- How do we value kinship and culture as healing and resilience?
The entanglement of poverty and child welfare in this country is a crisis. Families experiencing poverty are more likely to be reported for child neglect, and poverty is disproportionally present in communities of color, with evidence that disparate exposure to income poverty explains a substantial portion of racial inequities in CPS involvement, particularly between Black and white families. More than half of Black children experience one or more CPS investigations by the age of 18.
When poverty is mistaken for neglect, the result is blaming and punishing families for their circumstances and ultimately harming the very children and families they are supposed to help. Access to basic necessities is fundamental to the well-being and economic success of every family, and there is evidence that the number of child protective services (CPS) investigations could be cut by more than a third — or up to 1.2 million fewer investigations annually — if certain poverty reduction policies were in place.
ECFC looks forward to partnering with foundation champions for child welfare reform and poverty reduction, like our members Annie E Casey Foundation, Foundation for Child Development, and Casey Family Programs, to come together for children.
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White House Child Welfare Transformation Convening – July 2024
The White House convening featured parents, providers, researchers and funders discussing the crisis of mistaking poverty for neglect, and the critical need for access to basic necessities for families.
Valerie Frost, Kentucky Youth Advocates, shared her story about how her child’s severe health and developmental needs that should have activated a network of supports, instead triggered a CPS investigation followed by suspicion and continual monitoring by CPS throughout her child’s early years. Listen to Valerie’s story, and how it drove her to advocate for other families through a Thriving Families, Safer Children site in Kentucky.
Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, a leader in Flint Rx Kids, reminded convening attendees that the time when families are poorest is around childbirth; and that the first year of life is the peak year for child welfare involvement. That’s why we need programs like Flint Rx Kids, a pioneering initiative in Flint, Michigan, that “prescribes” $1,500 to all expectant mothers and $500 per month to babies in their first year – to improve infant and maternal health, the economic and mental well-being of participants, and community-wide outcomes. W.K. Kellogg Foundation and other funders support Flint Rx Kids.
Kim Eckel, founder and CEO of Footbridge for Families shared the impact of providing rapid financial support to families facing short-term financial crises which have no other solution – the program has filled in the gap and prevented a crisis for over 1,000 families in Pennsylvania. The Grable Foundation and the Heinz Endowments support Footbridge.
Several ECFC members leading efforts in child welfare reform, early childhood and maternal mental health, and poverty reduction strategies for families led discussions and shared strategies. Annie E. Casey Foundation facilitated a fireside chat on the proposed SOUL Family permanency option that would create a circle of caring adults who provide support, opportunity, unity and connections to community resources for young people as the move from foster care to adulthood. Casey Family Programs facilitated discussion around system partnerships that can reduce poverty and child welfare related interactions for families.
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The Administration announced several policies to prevent family separation and to support and create opportunities for youth and families. Reforms target several key areas including issuing new policy guidance that encourages states to update their maltreatment definitions under the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act to exclude the inability to provide adequate housing, child care and other material needs if the family has insufficient financial means to do so from the definition of child neglect; and training and guidance for mandated reports on recognizing economically fragile families, and the need and importance of connecting them to resources and supports.
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Related:
- Cutting Child Poverty in Half and More: Pandemic Era Lessons from Child and Family Advocates and Organizers, Foundation for Child Development, Executive Summary (2 pages), Full report (34 pages) and Webinar Recording (1 hr 15 min)
- The effects of child poverty reductions on child protective services involvement (June 2023) 2page abstract of findings from a collaboration among Casey Family Programs, Columbia University and University of Wisconsin-Madison, using National Academy of Sciences (NAS) A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty policy packages to examine the impact that such policies would have on CPS investigations and removals.
- Reducing Intergenerational Poverty, a new consensus study from the National Academy of Sciences, Board on Children, Youth, and Families examines key drivers of long- term, intergenerational poverty, including the racial disparities and structural factors that contribute to the cycle of poverty.