Family Resource Centers and Child Welfare System Involvement: A Quasi-Experimental Study of Capacity to Prevent Maltreatment Investigations and Foster Care Entry

Background and Purpose: Family Resource Centers (FRCs) represent a promising community-based approach to preventing child welfare system involvement by strengthening family protective factors and social supports. Despite their growing implementation nationwide, empirical evidence regarding their population-level impact on child welfare outcomes remains limited. This gap is particularly significant as policymakers seek cost-effective, upstream interventions that can reduce system burden while better serving vulnerable families. This study evaluates a set of FRCs implemented by the Strengthening Indiana Families project with funding from the U.S. Children's Bureau in the Administration for Children and Families. Designed as a primary prevention strategy for child maltreatment, we explore whether the implementation of these FRCs reduced child welfare investigations and foster care entries at the zip code level.

Methods: Using an interrupted time series with difference-in-differences (ITS-DiD) design, we analyzed administrative data from 2015–2022 across 15 Indiana zip codes (5 FRC-treated, 10 matched controls). Treatment zip codes were defined as those where ≥10% of children/caregivers engaged with FRCs post-2021. Two-to-one propensity score matching was used to balance treatment and control groups on baseline covariates, including child poverty rate, racial/ethnic composition, urban/rural classification, and baseline investigation rates. The ITS-DiD model included a continuous time variable, treatment/intervention indicators, and their interactions, with random intercepts at the zip code level. Mixed-effects models estimated changes in investigation and removal rates per 1,000 children. Given the exploratory nature of the study and limited sample size, we used an alpha level of 0.10 for statistical significance testing.

Results: FRC implementation was associated with a statistically significant reduction in child welfare investigation rates compared to control zip codes, with an adjusted differential effect of −13.3 investigations per 1,000 children annually (p = 0.08), but no significant effect on removal rates. For the 13,000 children in treated zip codes, this equates to 172 fewer investigations annually.

Conclusions and Implications: FRCs show promise as a community-driven strategy to reduce front-end child welfare system involvement with substantial cost-saving potential. The lack of impact on foster care entries suggests FRCs may be most effective at preventing investigations through early support and resource connection rather than altering removal decisions for higher-risk cases. Findings support scaling FRCs as a preventive intervention, particularly in communities disproportionately impacted by surveillance-oriented child welfare practices. These results align with growing calls to shift resources toward family-strengthening approaches that address structural determinants of maltreatment while reducing unnecessary system involvement. Limitations include the quasi-experimental design and small sample of zip codes, underscoring the need for replication in diverse contexts and with longer follow-up periods.