Expanding Child Welfare Caseworkers' Perspectives to Incorporate Structural Poverty into Individual Case Management Practice: The Empwr Program Training

Background: There is extensive scientific evidence that poverty and economic factors, including insufficient and inconsistent material resources, drive child welfare system-involvement through direct and indirect pathways (e.g., Landers et al., 2019). For child welfare-impacted families, resources may be available but families’ awareness of and access to supports is dependent upon caseworkers. Yet, caseworker are untrained in the importance of material supports in preventing maltreatment and rarely receive instruction on using or accessing such supports for their clients. This gap between available economic resources and caseworkers’ understanding of their importance leaves many child welfare-impacted families without basic necessities and care for their children, unnecessarily. While additional training seemingly could address this gap, general social sentiment is often opposed to providing material resources to these families; training needs to directly and specifically counter potential opposition. To effectively test a cash transfer intervention with child welfare-impacted families, we sought to understand caseworker perceptions and concerns about providing resources and of structural and individual economic hardships. We then developed and tested the effectiveness of a training designed to respond to their perceptions and close this practical gap in caseworker education.

Methods: Data are drawn from two phases of the Empower Parenting with Resources (EmPwR) Study, a randomized control trial of the effect of unconditional cash gifts on child and family wellbeing and child welfare system-involvement. We conducted structured focus groups (n=9) with child welfare caseworkers and supervisors (n=64) employed by a large child welfare service agency in Illinois. Focus groups were analyzed using inductive analysis and a flexible coding process. Using those findings, we developed, implemented, and evaluated a four-part training that included the research on the impact of resources on child maltreatment, the role of structural poverty, inequality, and racism in system involvement, and key aspects of cash transfer interventions, particularly the importance of individuals’ autonomy in determining how to spend money. The training, along with a pre- and post-test, was provided to all caseworkers, supervisors and managers in the relevant program.

Results: Focus group findings identified a cognitive dissonance between workers’ appreciation of individual factors and structural constraints that contribute to child welfare-involvement and their philosophical and pragmatic resistance to and concerns about providing cash and other material supports to families. Analyses of the post-test indicated that caseworkers developed a greater understanding and acceptance of the systemic and economic factors that contribute to child maltreatment. While caseworkers came to see issues such as poverty and racism as more systemic in nature, the largest impact was on their understanding of the relationship between material resources and child neglect.

Discussion: The results of this study underscore the gap in workers’ understanding of the causes and impact of economic resource needs of families but also their openness to additional perspectives. This receptivity is critical as workers are vital connections to resources for child welfare-impacted families. Our positive findings highlight the need to expand the availability of trainings on economic hardships and resources for child welfare caseworkers to improve equity in practice and family outcomes.