Session: Economic Life and Caregiving In Child Welfare-Impacted Families: Mixed-Methods Results from a Randomized Cash Transfer Study (Society for Social Work and Research 31st Annual Conference)

This symposium examines four areas of the economic experiences and contexts of child welfare-involved families in a randomized control trial of cash transfers. These papers provide a novel opportunity to understand families’ usual context along with their choices and behaviors with additional resources.

Methods: The qualitative and quantitative data come from the EmPwR Study, a first-in-the nation large-scale field experiment investigating whether unconditional cash gifts to families involved in the child welfare system reduces subsequent reports of child maltreatment and out-of-home placement. Having begun enrollment in January 2025, the study randomizes 800 families (400 treatment, 400 control) as they begin receiving Intact Family Services case management for low-risk child welfare cases across Illinois, where children remain in the home while caregivers receive services. Treatment families receive one year of monthly cash gifts averaging $500 per family, varying by local cost of living and family size.

This symposium presents four papers predicated on descriptive and thematic analyses of survey results from 315 caregivers at baseline as well as semi-structured interviews with 92 EmPwR caregivers at two timepoints (e.g., baseline and 6 months).

Results:

• The first paper provides an important counterpoint to deficit-focused studies of parenting practices and child behavior in this population. Caregivers report trying to create a sense of stability and security for their children and describe attuned, developmentally appropriate parenting behaviors, despite unstable conditions and resource precarity.

• The second paper investigates how caregivers use the EmPwR cash gift, finding that spending operates as a mechanism for promoting child and family wellbeing; one that values material necessities alongside social belonging and dignity.

• The third paper considers how caregiver perspectives and life experiences shape their responses on survey measures of stress, finding that varied appraisals of difficult situations help explain why conditions often interpreted as high stress are not always experienced and reported as such by families.

• Finally, the fourth paper describes the impasse experienced by EmPwR caregivers, who are primarily hourly workers without the flexibility to meet competing and unrelenting demands of the child welfare system and the labor market.

Conclusions & Implications: Unlike the dominant, deficient-oriented paradigm that characterizes the parenting of families in child welfare as harsh, aggressive, and ineffective, these analyses offer a strengths-based perspective grounded in caregivers’ lived realities. By integrating caregiver-centered perspectives with quantitative results from a broader sample, results illustrate how caregivers promote and protect parenting while navigating daily structural constraints. These findings call for policy and practice shifts to specify how material supports can reduce felt stress, support a tenable work-life balance, and enable parents to care for their children with greater stability and support.