What Does Cash Have to Do with It? Learning about the Experience of the Addition of a Time-Limited Unconditional Cash Transfer Among Child Welfare-Affected Families

Background and Purpose:

There is increasing empirical support of Unconditional Cash Transfer (UCT) programs to mitigate poverty (West et al., 2021) and calls to implement UCT in child welfare settings (Conrad, et. al., 2020; Webb, 2021).

One child welfare agency in NYC noticed that some of the families receiving services related to surviving family violence were ineligible for public benefits. An agency donor offered funds to provide the families $1000 per month for a fixed period to address this gap. The agency contacted Hunter College, CUNY to learn about how this Unconditional Cash Transfer for a fixed period of time would affect the families.

Methods:

This study was phenomenological. As such, during initial interviews, families defined and operationalized key concepts, including well-being, stress, effective parenting, and making ends meet. They were also asked about any negative expectations for the program. These concepts were integrated into the interview guide for follow-up interviews.

Eligible families had at least one custodial child under 18, an annual household income of less than $50,000 and were vaccinated for COVID-19. Families in acute crisis or those who would lose other benefits were ineligible. Eighteen families met the criteria. Fifteen consented to research. At inception, 1/3 of families reported food insecurity and 1/3 struggled with access to food. All 18 families were extremely low income—their incomes were 30% or less of the area median income.

Interviews occurred at program inception and a 15-month follow-up and were conducted by agency staff members and CUNY students. Interviews were conducted remotely in the families’ preferred language by native speakers using an interview guide. Interviewers reviewed computer-generated transcripts and translated them into English for coding. Original transcripts were consulted for recurring words or ideas. The principal investigator and two students coded the transcripts, grouping responses for each question and rereading them until themes emerged.

Results:

By follow-up, all families reported positive results from the funds relative to the standards they identified, including the ability to provide consistent access to nutritious food and make ends meet. Parents also reported effective parenting which they described as spending more time with their children, learning about them, monitoring their performance in school, and enjoying leisure time with them, all the while under less pressure. Stress was defined as feeling alone with one’s intractable problems. Parents also reported greater subjective well-being, defined as feelings of harmony, joy, calm, and agency over their lives.

Conclusions and Implications:

Our findings speak to the insights generated by centering research on participants' definitions of key concepts. Although participants remained extremely low-income throughout the study, families were able to prepare more nutritious meals, noted a reduction in parental stress, and recounted how they were able to parent more effectively. These findings make a compelling case for a large-scale mixed method study of the effects of UCT on child welfare involved families. In particular, we suggest that future studies explore the inclusion of UCT where other services remain in place.