February 2021
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This is the first IARA summary papers on family financial hardship and child welfare. It is a summary of six multi-year, multi-method evaluation studies conducted by the authors of programs directed toward families reported for child maltreatment. The programs each involved intensive services to families, including increased financially related (material) services. They also involved greater flexibility in worker-family decision making regarding service needs and any assistance to be provided. Together the studies involved upwards of 20,000 families. Five of the six were field experiments. In those studies, experimental families were provided with intensive and flexible services while control families were treated in the traditional manner by Child Protection Services (CPS) workers. The first two studies summarized were experiments in which workers were permitted to expend Title IV-E funds to address a broad array of family needs rather than simply payment for foster care. Those programs were focused on high-risk child protection cases. Two other experiments concerned lower-risk cases. In those, foundations provided extra funds that could be expended on experimental children and their families. In the fifth experiment, experimental families were directed into a state program designed to assist families experiencing financial hardships. The sixth study provided intensive services on a voluntary basis to families whose child maltreatment reports had not been accepted by CPS for further action and other families referred from other state agencies. Families were impoverished and, in most cases, suffering financially. In each study material services increased for experimental families, and outcome measures demonstrated improvements in the long-term safety and welfare of the children. The present summary concludes by advocating reuniting income maintenance and child protection in the mold of family and child welfare work before state CPS agencies were established in the early 1970's. This summary study is highly focused on particular subset of families suffering financial hardship. Summary Paper 2 (available on our website: www.iarstl.org) approaches the problem more broadly, focusing on poor and working class families generally. Subsequent summaries turn to solutions. 2