CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Child welfare agencies across the U.S. are investigating whether mitigating poverty can improve child maltreatment outcomes. While studies have suggested that temporary economic support can reduce reports of child neglect and abuse, no large-scale experiments have been done, and researchers are unsure about the amount of support needed to enhance children’s safety and the exact mechanisms through which these improvements occur.
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign social work professor Will Schneider is leading a team of national experts in exploring the efficacy of temporary economic support at preventing recurrent child maltreatment in Illinois families.
The Empower Parenting with Resources project includes 800 families who were referred by the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services to receive services for allegations of child maltreatment. All of those in the study are participants in the Brightpoint social services agency’s Intact Family Services program, which strives to keep families together whenever safe to do so while connecting them with needed resources such as behavioral and mental health care and parenting classes.
Half of the families in the study will be randomly selected to receive monthly cash gifts for one year to help them meet their day-to-day needs. Although the amount families receive will be scaled to their cost of living and household size, it will not be subject to any spending restrictions. The funds will be provided by DCFS. Recipients will access the money using refillable debit cards that will be replenished bimonthly.
Schneider and Meg Feely, a professor of community organizing at the University of Connecticut School of Social Work, will compare the outcomes of families that receive the subsidies with those of families who do not.
“Research over the past 30 years has suggested that financial hardship increases the risks of neglect reports and families’ involvement with child welfare agencies,” Schneider said. “EmPwR will be the largest study in the United States to evaluate whether monthly cash gifts reduce involvement with the child welfare system, and the pathways through which this might occur.”
Currently, about 18% of families participating in Illinois’ Intact Family Services program will have a new, substantiated case of maltreatment within 12 months, indicating a strong need for new approaches, he said.
“The poject is undergirded by the hypothesis that for a significant portion of families, child welfare services as usual do not adequately address the financial need causing the alleged child maltreatment or the financial hardships that prevent families from fully benefiting from the services offered,” said Schneider, who is also the faculty director of the Children and Family Research Center at Illinois.
The study will include a representative sample by race or ethnicity and geographic area, including participants living in urban, suburban and rural areas. Unique in the racial and geographic diversity of its sample population and its size, the study will enable the team to investigate as-yet unknown factors such as whether financial subsidies work better for some families than others, the amount needed and for how long, and if the effects vary by race or ethnicity, family structure or location.
The researchers will survey 200 of the families to explore whether the cash transfers have direct effects on parents’ mental health, stress and decision-making as well as on substantiated reports of maltreatment and children’s removal to foster care.
While the families in the control group will not receive the financial subsidies, they — and those in the treatment group — will continue to receive their usual case management services from Brightpoint, formerly called Children’s Home and Aid. DCFS will assess all the participating families to determine whether the children can safely remain in their home and confirm that the family can benefit from ongoing services.
“At the School of Social Work, we are deeply committed to evidence-based practice,” said social work dean Benjamin Lough. “The findings from this study have the potential to transform child welfare practices in Illinois, and I’m eager to see how they will inform policies that directly impact the well-being of families and children across the state.”
The project is supported by the William T. Grant Foundation and the Doris Duke Foundation.