Increasing Economic Security through Home Visiting Services to Prevent ACEs

Background and Purpose:

Children from families experiencing material hardship are disproportionately impacted by child maltreatment and other adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) has been shown to have positive impacts on families, such as reducing poverty and increasing employment. However, not all eligible families take up the credit. Based in Michigan, the EITC Access Project aimed to increase financial security among families with low incomes to reduce ACEs and increase family protective factors. The control group families received Parents as Teachers home visiting services, which aim to foster positive parenting and children’s healthy development. The treatment group families received information about EITC and participated in “Your Money, Your Goals,” a financial empowerment program, in conjunction with Parents as Teachers. We anticipated that families in the treatment group would have a greater EITC take-up rate, experience less ACEs and more family protective factors compared to control group.

Methods:

This study involved a quasi-experimental design. We compared parents within the treatment (n=69) and control (n=51) groups on pre- and post-test measures on EITC, ACEs, and protective factors. We used t-tests to examine statistically significant differences between the two groups. To assess outcomes, we ran a series of paired t-tests within the treatment and control groups to assess differences between the pre- and post-tests.

Results:

The treatment group showed a significant increase in the number of parents reporting awareness of, applying for, and receiving EITC between pre- and post-tests. For the control group, there were no significant differences in the EITC-related outcomes. The treatment group experienced a significant decrease in neglect scores between pre- and post-tests. The control group showed significant improvements in three protective factors: family functioning, nurturing and attachment, and knowledge of child development.

Conclusions and Implications:

The findings of the EITC Access Project are promising, suggesting positive impacts of the program and movement on indicators proximal to the intervention. Increasing family income may alleviate economic stressors, potentially improving parents’ abilities to meet the basic needs of children, such as adequate supervision and food. Surprisingly, improvements in three protective factors were observed within the control group but not the treatment group. The reasons for these disparities are unclear, as both groups received the Parents as Teachers intervention. This warrants further investigation in future studies.