Last Updated: July 2023
Material hardship increases the risk for child welfare involvement due to neglect and abuse. Providing income support to families in need, like assistance provided through the TANF, reduces the risk for child maltreatment and the child welfare system involvement that results from it. This is crucial to ameliorating racial disparities, as families of color continue to experience disproportionate harm at the intersection of TANF and the child welfare system. Given the strong link between cash assistance and child well-being, advocates should urge states to increase TANF income support payments and provide them to more families struggling to meet their basic needs.
Key Resources:
This TANF and Child Welfare Brief provides a short summary of the importance of income support provided by TANF for reducing involvement in child welfare. The slide deck described below provides a much more in-depth analysis of the importance of concrete supports for reducing involvement in the child welfare system.
Chapin Hall policy experts collaborated with The American Public Human Services Association to create the “Evidence to Impact” policy tool. This resource was designed to help interested parties learn about peer-reviewed research and policy options to increase access to supports that positively impact child and family well-being. It includes a section on TANF, but also other policies that provide cash to families.
Family and Child Well-being System: Economic & Concrete Supports as a Core Component: This 171-page slide deck is published by Chapin Hall, a policy research center at the University of Chicago. It synthesizes a large body of research to provide an in-depth overview of economic insecurity, child welfare involvement, and the historical contexts to those topics. It also provides a deep dive into evidence around the positive impacts of economic and concrete supports on child welfare involvement and overall mental health well-being. Here is an alternative link to download the slide deck if the one above displays an error, and more information about the project can be found here.
Research Reinforces: Providing Cash to Families in Poverty Reduces Risk of Family Involvement in Child Welfare: This short CBPP report was created in response to Chapin Hall’s research linked above. It outlines the overall benefits of cash to child well-being, explaining how increasing TANF cash assistance could be used to reduce the risk of child welfare involvement.
Economic Supports – Casey Family Programs: This issue brief begins with an explanation of the ways in which current child protection system is “not effective at distinguishing between intentional harm… and harm resulting from a lack of access to adequate food, housing, and other material resources.” While it acknowledges that child protection agencies cannot alleviate poverty, they can help initiate community-driven strategies. The rest of the brief goes on to outline various forms of economic supports that could be used to improve the health, safety, and wellbeing of families, thereby preventing child maltreatment.