"If I Can't Provide As a Mother... I Don't Get My Kids Back": Experiences of Income Loss and Financial Sanctions in the American Child Welfare System

Introduction

The majority of families who come into contact with the American child welfare system are impoverished and therefore also eligible for public benefits. As a result, many of the families who are navigating the bureaucratically complex child welfare system are also concurrently navigating American poverty policy regulations, institutions, and services. Scholars have separately conceptualized both poverty policy and child welfare policy as punitive, with substantial research documenting negative constituent experiences driven by each system’s disciplinary orientation. This study brings together evidence on these two distinct systems of governance to examine the lived experiences faced by parents who are dually impacted by both poverty and child welfare governance at the same time.

Methods

I examine how parents who are investigated for child maltreatment experience new and distinct financial hardships and economic punishments associated with poverty governance in the United States. I conduct this examination through analysis of qualitative data from 21 interviews with child welfare-impacted parents. Data were collected via semi-structured, in-depth interviews conducted on Zoom with parents living in a Midwestern State. Interviews were coded and analyzed with a focus on how parents experienced income loss tied to compliance with child welfare system requirements.

Results

Across the board, parents reported substantial financial challenges caused by coming into contact with the child welfare system. More specifically, I find that parents experience poverty governance-related financial hardships and sanctions through three particular mechanisms: (1) lost jobs and lost job hours due to scheduling precarity, (2) forced child support payments to the state and/or garnished wages, and (3) reduced public benefits and social service eligibility. These mechanisms created significant negative impacts on family well-being and parents’ capacity to work towards reunification with their children. For example, parents reported reduced SNAP benefits which directly affected parents’ capacity to materially provide for their children during highly scrutinized visitations because it was more difficult to purchase food and drinks for their children without their public benefits.

Implications

This study highlights key conceptual similarities between poverty governance and child welfare governance. Findings make clear that these conceptual similarities ultimately result in these two systems being intricately connected in practice, as well, and families impacted by both forms of governance face unique practical challenges. The results underscore several key areas of poverty governance - including work scheduling, child support enforcement, and safety net policy, which ought to be reformed in order to improve family outcomes within the child welfare system.