The Strength and Dynamics of Private Safety Nets: Examining Informal Support Networks and Mental Health Among Parents Involved with the Child Welfare System

Background: Child Protective Services (CPS) received nearly 4.4 million referrals of maltreatment allegations involving nearly 7.7 million children in 2024. About 37% of all U.S. children, including 53% of Black children, will receive a CPS investigation by age 18. Maltreatment and CPS involvement are associated with compromised family well-being for children and parents, including exposure to poverty, hardship, substance use, anxiety, and depression. Based on social capital theory, considering and nourishing families’ informal support networks, or private safety nets, is a potentially untapped approach to help families. The benefits and stability of safety nets may not apply to parents with CPS involvement, however. When facing CPS, parents experience a high frequency of adverse conditions, instability, and crisis situations. Plus, safety nets in the CPS environment can introduce, rather than relieve, stress and burden. This study examined parents’ private safety nets, patterns of change over the course of CPS involvement, and how safety net trajectories relate to parental and child mental health.

Methodology: This study used caregiver (largely biological parents) data from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-being II (NSCAW II) dataset, a national longitudinal sample of children ages 0 through 17 years investigated for child maltreatment. Utilized data were collected at baseline and 18 and 36 months later restricted to children’s caregivers who remained constant over time (N=2,877). Safety net indicators included six dichotomous indicators of support (i.e., (a) availability of and (b) satisfaction with practical, informational, and companionship support). The Mental Health Component of the Short Form-12 and the Child Behavior Checklist, both validated measures, assessed caregiver and child mental health, respectively. Analyses included descriptive and bivariate analysis, and longitudinal latent class analysis (LLCA), a technique that identified unobserved subgroups based on safety net indicators and unique longitudinal trajectories across these indicators. We included relevant parent and child covariates.

Findings: Practical support was the least commonly available to 50-53% of parents, while companionship support was more widely available (86-88%) with informational support falling in between (68-72%). Parents formed 4 classes. Members of the “low stable” class (n=344; 12%) had the lowest proportions of parents with safety nets and lowest proportions of satisfaction with nets across all waves. At the other extreme, the “high stable” class (n=1,208; 42%) had the highest proportion of members with safety nets across domains and over time. The remaining classes, including the “weakening” class (n=516; 18%) and the “strengthening” class (n=809; 28%) generally experienced change in support over time. For both caregiver and child mental health outcomes, parents in the “low stable” and “weakening” classes reported similar mental health scores to one another and significantly lower scores relative to parents in the “strengthening” and “high stable” classes.

Conclusions and Implications: Parents involved in CPS commonly have weak and volatile safety nets during CPS involvement, and these safety nets matter for mental health. Private safety nets, if available or nourished, could protect families by safeguarding against negative consequences of stressful CPS situations on family outcomes.