Category: Child Welfare

The Administration for Children and Families prepared four fact sheets on states’ definitions of child maltreatment and policies for reporting, screening, and investigating child maltreatment. Using data from the State Child Abuse and Neglect (SCAN) Policies Database, the report compares definitions and procedures for 50 states, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. For example, all states … Read more

In recognizing the unique stressors that immigrant families face, which can place them at greater risk for child maltreatment, researchers from New Mexico State University conducted a rigorous review of the research literature to identify child welfare interventions specifically targeted at immigrant families. To be included, studies had to focus on a broad child maltreatment … Read more

A new paper published in Health Affairs examines how states’ substance use policies relate to child maltreatment reports there. The authors find that adopting a “punitive” policy that treats prenatal substance use as criminal or as child maltreatment produces a 19 percent increase in infant maltreatment reports, driven by a 38 percent increase in substantiated … Read more

Newly published results from a randomized clinical trial find that participation in a postpartum nurse home visiting program reduces child maltreatment investigations and child emergency medical care usage each by one-third by age five. For 18 months beginning in July 2009, all children born in Durham County, North Carolina were randomly assigned to participate in … Read more

In a new research brief, Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child unpacks the ways that addressing racism can open new opportunities for child wellbeing and success. The brief notes the established link between racism and worse child and family outcomes, pointing specifically to the known pathways connecting toxic stress, trauma, and recurring adversity to later … Read more

The Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison provides two potential policy roadmaps to halve U.S. child poverty in the next 10 years. The first policy package expands existing programs like the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit (CTC), increases SNAP benefits by 35 percent, and increases the … Read more

Brookings reports that there is an important demographic rationale for investing in young people, from infants to teens. It has to do with the unprecedented aging of the nation’s population and the increased reliance of our rapidly growing senior population on a young population whose size will remain relatively stagnant. On top of this, demographic … Read more

A new study in Preventive Medicine Reports describes how authors surveyed Vermont WIC participants with questions on food insecurity risk and an understudied form of material hardship: diaper need. Authors found that half of participating households were at risk for food insecurity and one-third reported diaper need, with a strong association between the two measures. … Read more

Spotlight on Poverty has published an overview of the two major child poverty alleviation policy proposals currently under debate. Both proposals improve upon the existing child tax credit, which is effective but does not reach all families since it is restricted to those with annual incomes above $2,500. The current annual Child Tax Credit pays … Read more

Scholars from the American Enterprise Institute partnered with experts in academia, state departments, and the law to outline some of the challenges that COVID-19 has wrought for child welfare systems, and the lessons to be gleaned from this era. The report notes that while the stressors of the pandemic have likely heightened child maltreatment incidence, … Read more