Neglect as poverty: the myth that won’t go away

It’s one of those myths that won’t go away and instead is gathering steam–the idea that parents who are found to be neglectful by child welfare agencies are really just poor people being judged for their inability to provide sufficient material support to their children. It doesn’t matter how much evidence is cited against it. The myth continues because it is an essential part of the narrative that is currently dominant in the child welfare arena. Nevertheless it’s been over a year since my last attempt to shed some light on this issue, and some new research has become available, thus it seems a good time to revisit the topic.

It’s Time to Stop Confusing Poverty With Neglect, exhorted Jerry Milner, Children’s Bureau Commissioner and his special assistant David Kelly back in January, 2020, in a typical statement of this myth. “Most of the reasons for child welfare involvement fall into what we call “neglect” rather than physical abuse or exploitation. Our most recent child maltreatment data tell us that 60 percent of victims have a finding of neglect only…More times than not, poverty and struggles to meet the basic, concrete needs of a family are a part of the equation in all types of neglect.” Miller and Kelly now sell their expertise at Family Integrity & Justice Works, an arm of the Public Knowledge consulting firm which has the goal of “replacing child welfare.”

Media outlets have taken this story and run with it. Here is the Philadelphia Inquirer: “A common misunderstanding is that the leading reason kids are taken into the foster care system is because of physical or sexual abuse. But that accounts for only one of six cases. Children far more often are removed from their homes for ‘neglect,’ which often amounts to symptoms of poverty, like food insecurity or unstable housing.”

The Biden Administration has endorsed the idea that most neglect findings reflect nothing but poverty. The Administration on Children and Families (ACF) has solicited applications for a grant of between one and two million dollars “to support the development and national dissemination of best practices to strengthen the capacity of child abuse hotline staff to distinguish between poverty and willful neglect.”

There is no federal definition of child neglect, and state definitions vary. In contrast to abuse, it is usually defined as an act of omission rather than comission. According to the Child Welfare Information Gateway, neglect is “commonly defined in state law as the failure of a parent or other person with responsibility for the child to provide needed food, clothing, shelter, medical care, or supervision to the degree that the child’s health, safety and well-being are threatened with harm.” The most commonly recognized categories of neglect include physical neglect or failure to provide for basic physical needs, failure to provide adequate supervision , educational neglect or failure to educate the child as required by law, and medical neglect.

There is no dispute that more children are found to be neglected than abused. Based on data collected by the federal government and published in Child Maltreatment 2020, three-quarters (76.1 percent) of the children found to be victims of maltreatment in 2020 were found to be neglected. A total of 16.5 percent were found to be physically abused, 9.4 percent were found to be sexually abused, and six percent were found to be victims of some other type of maltreatment.* Of the children who were removed and placed in foster care, according to the 2020 AFCARS Report, 63 percent had neglect listed as a circumstance associated with the child’s removal, compared to 12 percent with physical abuse and four percent with sexual abuse.

But the idea that neglect findings represent nothing but poverty is questionable. First, the neglect deniers would probably agree that most poor parents do not neglect their children but instead find a way to meet their needs, relying on charity, extra work, or subordinating their own wants to the needs of their children. When poor children are deprived of food, clothing or adequate housing, other factors such as substance abuse, mental illness and domestic violence are often involved. Second, more than half of the states exempt from the definition of neglect any deprivation that is due to the lack of financial means of the parents. Third, the definition of neglect is not confined to the failure to provide adequate food, clothing or shelter but instead includes other acts of omission, such as failure to protect a child from dangerous caregivers, or failure to ensure that children go to school and get needed medical care. Lack of supervision, a common form of neglect, can reflect poverty when parents feel they must rely on inadequate arrangements in order to go to work; we just don’t know the degree to which neglect findings reflect such decisions by parents.

But until now we did not have quantitative data concerning the types of neglect being investigated or the importance of risk factors like substance abuse and mental illness. A recent study from California, the nation’s most populous state, begins to fill this data gap. Palmer and colleagues used a representative sample of 295 neglect investigations that took place in California in 2017. They found that only 14 percent of the investigations involved physical neglect–the deprivation of food, clothing, and housing that is most closely connected with poverty. The most common types of neglect that were investigated were inadequate supervision, investigated in 44 percent of the cases, and failure to protect (leaving the child in the care of a known abuser or failure to intervene with known abuse), in 29 percent of cases. Moreover almost all (99 percent) of the investigations of physical neglect included concerns related to substance use, domestic violence, or mental illness; or they involved another type of maltreatment such as physical or sexual abuse or an additional neglect allegation. Thus, the authors conclude that almost no parent was investigated for material deprivation alone, although it is true that they did not separate out any lack of supervision cases that involved the inability to obtain adequate childcare for work or other necessary activities.

The evidence from California is very suggestive, but as the authors caution, it is possible that other states receive more reports that focus on unmet material needs, are less likely to screen out such reports, or emphasize them more during the investigation. This is possible because California, according to a recent study of state neglect definitions, is one of five states that have adopted an “expanded” definition of child neglect, including more neglect types and allowing for the threat of harm, rather than actual harm, in neglect findings. Studies similar to the Palmer study from other states with more limited neglect definitions would be useful.

While the California study is not sufficient to negate the presumption that findings of neglect represent nothing more than poverty, it is important to note that there are no studies supporting this viewpoint. So why does the myth that child welfare treats poverty as neglect persist despite the lack of evidence supporting it, and the many reasons for skepticism? It persists because it supports the narrative and associated policy prescriptions of the child welfare establishment today–child welfare leaders, administrators, legislatures, and influential funders like Casey Family Programs. The dominant narrative describes a racist family policing system that persecutes people only because they are Black, Indigenous or poor. The policy prescriptions involve radically shrinking or even abolishing child welfare systems.

According to the prevailing view, if omissions that are labeled neglect are strictly due to poverty, there is no need to intervene with social services or child removal. Instead, governments should provide economic benefits to neglectful parents. There is a body of research suggesting that economic support for families does help reduce maltreatment, perhaps not only by helping parents meet their children’s financial needs, but also enabling them to provide better childcare and improving parents’ mental health through stress reduction. Independent of their impact on maltreatment, I strongly support increases in the safety net for families and children. But available information suggests that it will take more than financial assistance to cure neglect in most cases. Improved economic supports will not be a replacement for services to help parents address challenges with substance abuse, domestic violence, mental health, and parenting, and for child removal when there is no other option.

What can be done to alleviate the confusion and misinformation around child neglect and poverty? Collecting better data from the states would be helpful. In its annual Child Maltreatment reports, the Children’s Bureau uses data from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS). When reporting on the type of maltreatment alleged and then found, states must pick up to four out of eight categories, including physical abuse, “neglect or deprivation of necessities,” medical neglect, sexual abuse, psychological or emotional maltreatment, sex trafficking, no alleged maltreatment, other or “unknown or missing.” It is not clear whether the “neglect” category is supposed to indicate all types of neglect or just those involving “deprivation of necessities,” but there is no way for states to clarify what they mean or to distinguish between the most common types of neglect. The same problem exists with the AFCARS data used to compile federal reports on foster care and adoption.

Clearly, a reform of the data elements that states are required to submit is needed so that resesarchers can see the types of neglect that are being alleged and found for each child. However, such an improvement would not substitute for careful research like the California study cited above because it will never be possible to rely on the thoroughness of database entries by overworked social workers. We cannot be sure they will enter all of the applicable categories, for many reasons, including that not all the applicable categories may be substantiated for a particular case. Moreover, while states are required to report on some caregiver risk factors contributing to abuse and neglect, such as alcohol and drug abuse, emotional disturbance and domestic violence, these seem to be vastly understated by the social workers who enter these factors in state databases. For example, only 26.4 percent of caregivers of maltreated children were found to have the risk factor of drug abuse and only 36 percent of removals involved parental drug abuse, according to federal data. Yet anecdotal reports from states and localities tend to indicate a much higher percentage of cases that involve substance abuse.

Thus, a reform of data collection might help, but would not solve the problem, especially considering that that many child welfare leaders and funders seem inclined to maintain the hypothesis that CPS confuses poverty with neglect. Ideally, the federal government and other funders would support more studies like that of Palmer et al, and more academics would consider performing such studies.

The myth that CPS confuses neglect with poverty is pernicious because, like other myths currently prevalent in child welfare, it runs the risk of hurting abused and neglected children. It is being used to justify dismantling child protective services, eliminating mandatory reporting, or more modest proposals to hamper these critical protections for children. The federal government should improve data collection on child neglect and associated risk factors as well as supporting additional research to provide more accurate estimates of their prevalance.

*According to the report’s authors, “other” could be anything that does not fit into the categories offered by the Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting System and includes threatened abuse and neglect, drug addiction, and lack of supervision according to state comments submitted with the data.

Declining child abuse? The misuse of data in child welfare

Lowest number of maltreatment victims in five years, crowed the Administration on Children and Families (ACF), summarizing its annual report, Child Maltreatment 2019. Child welfare newsletter The Imprint eagerly repeated the claim, claiming that the Number of Child Abuse and Neglect Victims Reached Record Low in 2019. The venerable Child Welfare League of America followed suit in its Children’s Monitor saying “Data Shows Decline in Child Abuse in FY2019.” It is only by reading the report that one learns that the decline was not actually in the number of victims of abuse or neglect. Instead, it was a decline in the number of children who were found by Child Protective Services (CPS) to be abused or neglected, which is not the same thing at all.

Child Maltreatment, the Children’s Bureau’s annual report on child abuse and neglect, is based on data from the states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico collected through the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS). Child Maltreatment 2019 is based on data from Federal Fiscal Year (FFY) 2019, which ended September 30, 2019. (Note that these data reflect the year before the inception of the coronavirus pandemic.) Displayed below is a summary of four key national rates reported by ACF between 2015 and 2019. The first indicator shown is the referral rate, which describes the number of calls and other communications describing instance of child maltreatment per 1,000 children. Next is the screened-in referrals rate, which includes referrals that are passed on for investigation or alternative response. Once screened in, only some reports are referred for investigation, and the third set of bars represents children who received an investigation per 1,000 children. The fourth group shows the rate of children found to be abused or neglected–or those who received a substantiation. Let us go over these numbers in more detail.

*Note that Investigation and Substantiation Rates are based on number of children, not referrals
*Source: Child Welfare Monitor tabulation of data from Child Maltreatment 2019, available from*
*https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/documents/cb/cm2019.pdf*

Total referrals: A referral is a call to the hotline or another communication alleging abuse or neglect. In 2019, agencies received an estimated total of 4.4 million referrals, including about 7.9 million children. The “referral rate” was 59.5 referrals per 1,000 children in FFY 2019. This rate has increased every year since 2015, when it was 52.3 per 1,000 children. It is worth noting that the referral rate differs greatly by state, ranging from 17.1 referrals per 1,000 children in Hawaii to 171.6 per 1,000 children in Vermont, as shown in the report’s state-by-state tables. These differences in referral rates may stem from cultural differences regarding the duty to intervene in other families, differences in publicity for child abuse hotlines and ease of reporting, or temporal factors like a recent highly-publicized recent child abuse death.

Screened-in referrals (reports): A referral can be either “screened in” or screened out because it does not meet agency criteria. In FFY 2019, agencies screened in 2.4 million referrals, or 32.2 referrals per 100,000 children. This was a decrease in the rate of screened-in referrals per 1,000 children after three straight years of increases. This percentage of referrals that were screened in varied greatly by state, ranging from 16 percent in South Dakota to 98.4 percent in Alabama. States reporting a decrease in screened-in referrals gave several reasons, such as a change in how they combine multiple reports and a decision to stop automatically screening in any referral for a child younger than three years old.

Children who received an investigation (child investigation rate): Once a report is screened in, it can receive a traditional investigation or it can be assigned to an alternative track, which is often called “alternative response” or “family assessment response.” (Two-track systems are often labeled as “differential response.”) This rate represents the number of children who received an investigation as opposed to an alternative response. Only an investigation can result in a finding of abuse or neglect; an alternative response generally results in an offer of services. Like the referral rate, the investigation rate increased from 2015 to 2018 and then decreased in 2019. This rate also varies widely between states and over time. Some states eliminated or expanded their differential response programs in 2019, resulting in more or fewer investigations, as described in the report.

Substantiation: A “victim” is defined in NCANDS as a “child for whom the state determined at least one maltreatment was substantiated or indicated; and a disposition of substantiated or indicated was assigned for a child in a report.” The report’s authors refer to the number of such children per 1,000 as the “victimization rate.” But clearly substantiation does not equal actual victimization. The difficulty of making a correct decision on whether maltreatment has occurred is well-documented. Stories of families with repeated reports that are never substantiated or not confirmed until there is a serious injury or even death are legion. So are reports of parents wrongly found to be abusive or neglectful. Therefore, we have chosen to use the term “substantiation rate” instead of ‘victimization rate.” This rate varies greatly by state, from 2.4 per 1,000 children in North Carolina to 20.1 in nearby Kentucky.[1] The national substantiation rate in FFY 2019 was 8.9 per 1,000 children, down from 9.2 per 1,000 in FFY 2019 and FFY 2015. States reported a total of 656,000 (rounded) victims of substantiated child abuse or neglect in FFY 2019–a decline of four percent since 2015.

So does this decline in the number and rate of substantiations really connote a decline in child abuse and neglect? The range in substantiation rates among states argues against this idea. Unless states differ by almost a factor of 10 in the prevalence of child abuse and neglect, these numbers must reflect factors other than the actual prevalence of maltreatment. And indeed the report’s authors acknowledge that “[s]tates have different policies about what is considered child maltreatment, the type of CPS responses (alternative and investigation), and different levels of evidence required to substantiate an abuse allegation, all or some of which may account for variations in victimization rates.” Changes in these policies and practices can account for changes in these rates over time. Moreover, changes in all the earlier stages of reporting, screening, and assignment to investigation or alternative response contribute to changes in the substantiation rate. In 2019, screened-in referrals and investigations per thousand-children both decreased, which clearly contributed to the decrease in the substantiation rate.

It is interesting to note that while referrals increased every year between FFY 2015 and FFY 2019, both screened-in referrals and investigations decreased in FFY 2019. This suggests a general tendency among states to be less aggressive in responding to allegations of maltreatment, perhaps in accord with the prevalent mindset among child welfare leaders nationally and around the country, as discussed below.

Understanding the difference between “victimization” and “substantiation” and the many possible causes of a decrease in this rate reveals the deceptiveness of ACF’s statement that “[n]ew federal child abuse and neglect data shows 2019 had the lowest number of victims who suffered maltreatment in five years.” Lynn Johnson, the HHS assistant secretary for children and families, is quoted in ACF’s press release as saying that “[t]hese new numbers show we are making significant strides in reducing victimization due to maltreatment.” Unless Johnson and the ACF leadership intended to mislead, it appears they are woefully ignorant of the meaning of these numbers.

Most regular leaders of this blog already know why ACF wants to support the narrative of declining child maltreatment. The current trend in child welfare policy, regardless of political party, is to oppose intervention in families. Republicans who oppose government spending and interference in family life have made common cause with Democrats who think they are reducing racial disparities and supporting poor poor families by allowing parents more freedom in how they raise their children, even if it means leaving children unprotected. Members of both parties came together to pass the Family First Act, which encoded this family preservation mindset into federal law.

Child Welfare Monitor has pointed out many other instances where ACF or by other members of the child welfare establishment in the interests of supporting the family preservation mindset. For example, we wrote about the Homebuilders program, which was classified by a federally-funded clearinghouse as “well-supported” despite never having been proven effective for keeping families together. In fact, Homebuilders had to be classified as well-supported because it was one of the key programs touted by ACF and others in promoting the Family First Act and other policies promoting family preservation.

So if ACF’s “victimization” data do not in fact tell us what is happening to abuse and neglect rates, what else is available? We call on Congress to pass an overdue re-authorization of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act and include a fifth National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect. Data for the last study was collected in 2005 and 2006; it is high time for an update which should put an end (at least temporarily) to the misuse of NCANDS data as an indicator of trends in child maltreatment.

President Biden has called for ending a “culture in which facts themselves are manipulated and even manufactured.” We hope that ACF under its new leadership, as well as the rest of the child welfare establishment, will take these words to heart and commit themselves to truth and transparency from now on.

[1]: Pennsylvania has a substantiation rate of 1.8, even lower than that of North Carolina, but in Pennsylvania, many of the actions or inactions categorized as “neglect” are classified as “General Protective Services” and not included in the substantiation rate, making its data not comparable to that of the other states and territories.

[2]: Massachusetts did not provide data on FFY 2019 child maltreatment fatalities.