Climate Shocks and Child Welfare Systems: Analyzing the Association between Maltreatment Referral Patterns and the 2021 Texas Freeze

Background and Purpose: Climate disasters increasingly strain child welfare systems across the United States, yet research rarely examines how systemic infrastructure failures during large-scale emergencies disrupt interactions between families and child protective services (CPS). The 2021 Texas Freeze, a statewide crisis marked by prolonged power outages and utility failures, provides a critical case for analyzing the association between climate shocks and child welfare risks. While prior studies focus on heatwaves or localized disasters, this research fills a gap by quantifying CPS referral trends during a cold-weather climate event and identifying systemic vulnerabilities in disaster response. Drawing on ecological systems theory, this study examines how cascading infrastructure breakdowns (e.g., power grid collapses, water system failures) limit opportunities for maltreatment identification, while simultaneously intensifying family stressors that may have increased the risk of negative outcomes for families during and after the disaster.

Methods: This study analyzes child maltreatment referral data from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) for fiscal years 2020–2022. The dataset includes 1,066 United States counties, including 64 Texas counties. A quasi-experimental difference-in-differences design compares semimonthly pre- and post-freeze CPS referral rates per 1,000 children in Texas versus non-Texas counties. Multilevel models adjust for pandemic disruptions (e.g., school closures), seasonal trends, and socioeconomic disparities using the Social Deprivation Index (SDI) scores, which measure county-level metrics for income, education, employment, and housing quality.

Results: Regression analyses reveal Texas counties experienced a significant post-freeze increase in screened-in referrals (b = 0.08, p < .01) compared to the rest of the country. The results demonstrate that the post-freeze timeframe is associated with increased family interactions with CPS in Texas relative to non-Texas counties, even after adjusting for pandemic disruptions and seasonal trends. Moreover, rural counties (b = 1.53, p < .001) and those with higher SDI scores (b = 0.01, p < .001) experienced disproportionally increased referral rates, reflecting concentrated disadvantage in income, education, housing, and employment during the timeframe of the study.

Conclusions and Implications: This study describes how systemic infrastructure breakdowns during the Texas Freeze were associated with increased family interactions with CPS, particularly in rural and high-poverty regions. These findings align with ecological systems theory, suggesting utility failures and resource scarcity exacerbate family stressors that could be related to CPS interactions. Descriptive insights underscore the need for research into mechanisms linking climate disasters to child welfare risks, such as parental job loss due to infrastructure collapse or trauma from prolonged displacement. This study informs the literature on the longitudinal effects of climate disruptions on family stability and interventions targeting infrastructure resilience in climate-vulnerable communities. For policymakers, these results highlight the value of cross-sector data sharing (e.g., integrating aggregated CPS data with additional observational data) to prepare for future crises. By quantifying climate-related risks to child welfare systems, this work also informs the alignment of environmental and social policy and advances social work science.