Approximately 37.4% of US children experience a Child Protective Services (CPS) investigation in response to a referral for child maltreatment by their 18th birthday,¹ and more than 250 000 children enter foster care each year.² Children in households with low and/or unstable incomes experience heightened risk for child maltreatment compared with children in families with greater incomes and stable household resources.^3-5 Observational research suggests public assistance and tax policies may play a role in preventing child maltreatment and foster care placements by improving household resources among families of low income.^6-8 However, to our knowledge, the association of state Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) policies with child maltreatment outcomes has yet to be examined.

Limited resources for child protection create challenging decision situations for child protective services (CPS) workers at the point of intake. A body of research has examined the factors associated with worker decisions and processes using a variety of methodological approaches to gain knowledge on decision‐making. However, few attempts have been made to systematically review this literature. As part of a larger project on decision‐making at intake, this systematic review addressed the question of the factors associated with worker decisions to investigate alleged maltreatment referrals. Quantitative studies that examined factors associated with screening decisions in CPS practice settings were included in the review. Database and other search methods were used to identify research published in English over a 35‐year period (1980–2015). Of 1,147 identified sources, 18 studies were selected for full data extraction. The studies were conducted in the United States, Canada, and Sweden and varied in methodological quality. Most studies examined case factors with few studies examining other domains. To inform CPS policy and practice, additional research is needed to examine the relationships between decision‐making factors and case outcomes. Greater attention needs to be given to the organizational and external factors that influence decision‐making.

The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, which was established in 1996 and renewed in 2005, constituted a major reform of the US welfare system. Since its renewal, few studies have examined its effects on children. We used instrumental variables, two-way fixed effects, and event studies to examine the associations between state-level TANF policies, Child Protective Services involvement, and foster care placement during the period 2004–16. We found that each additional TANF policy that restricted access to benefits was associated with a 13 percent reduction in TANF caseloads. Using TANF policies as an instrument, we found that increases in TANF caseloads were associated with significant reductions in numbers of neglect victims and foster care placements. In two-way fixed effects models, restrictions on TANF access were associated with more than forty-four additional neglect victims per 100,000 child population and between nineteen and twenty-two additional children per 100,000 placed in foster care. Our findings suggest that additional research using data that capture the nuances of maltreatment should be used to investigate the relationships among TANF policies, child maltreatment, and foster care placement.

By 2014, the majority of U.S. states had implemented differential response (DR), a system policy that seeks to serve families of low-to moderate-risk for child maltreatment through family engagement, diversion from formal child protective services investigations, and service provision. However, the effects of DR programs on child welfare dynamics have yet to be evaluated nationally using causal methods. Using a quasi-experimental study design with data drawn from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System from 2004 to 2017, we found states with DR programs had approximately 19% fewer substantiated reports, 25% fewer children substantiated for neglect, and a 17% reduction in foster care services utilization when compared to states without DR programs. We find these estimates to be robust to the opioid epidemic and incarceration rates. Additional research is needed to better characterize DR programs and isolate the effects of DR programs geographically.