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Child Support and Child Welfare System Interactions

This report investigates the interactions between child support and child welfare systems, updating an earlier study (Cancian et al., 2017) with new causal estimates of the effects of foster care cost-recovery child support orders on duration in care, reunification, permanency, and re-entry into foster care in Wisconsin. It has direct implications for policy efforts to align these systems to better support families, as proposed by recent federal guidance that advises limiting cost-recovery child support orders—in which primarily custodial mothers reimburse the state to offset foster care costs—to rare cases. Despite this guidance, few states have adjusted their policies to date. We exploit variations in cost-recovery practices across Wisconsin counties to estimate the causal effects of such orders on children’s foster care trajectories.

Using data from the Wisconsin Administrative Data Core (WADC), spanning 2004 to 2019, we focus on Wisconsin mothers with at least one child under 15 who were custodial parents prior to their child’s placement in foster care (between June 2004 and June 2016), and for whom the child’s father was identified. We examine variation in children’s foster care experiences over the three to five years post-removal as a function of whether their mother received a cost-recovery child support order. To produce causal estimates of the effect of such orders on foster care trajectories, we employ an instrumental variables strategy that exploits substantial variation—ranging from 0% to approximately 80%—in the proportion of foster care cases to which cost-recovery orders are applied across Wisconsin counties. Notably, this variation is uncorrelated with county demographics or child protective services caseloads, indicating it likely stems from county-specific practices. Outcomes include children’s foster care duration, their probability of exiting to reunification or another permanent placement, and the likelihood of returning to care after exit (re-entry).

Results indicate that cost-recovery child support orders substantially extend the length of time children spend in foster care, with the presence of these orders roughly doubling average foster care duration. Such orders also decrease the likelihood that children achieve permanency via reunification. Notably, these effects are largest during the first 12 months children are in care and, while they remain substantial in subsequent years children are in care, decline modestly in magnitude as care duration increases. In addition, while we find that cost-recovery orders reduce the chances of foster care re-entry, this likely reflects that—because children with such orders are less likely to exit care in the first place—they are also less likely to re-entrer care. On the whole, these results imply that placing financial demands on mothers with children in foster care has a profound negative influence on the length of time their children spend in care and on family reunification, challenging the efficacy and fairness of such cost-recovery practices.

Categories

Child Maltreatment & Child Welfare System, Child Support, Child Support Policy Research, Children, Orders & Payments, Related Social Policies, WI Administrative Data Core

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