Helping children, families, and communities grow stronger together.

Casey Family Services brings together child welfare and allied professionals to increase understanding about the intersection between poverty and child neglect. Families that lack the financial security to meet basic needs risk their children’s removal by child protective services. Often because poverty is misunderstood as neglect, a child is set on a path that can threaten to keep him or her away from family for many years – even forever. This is an unnecessary trauma.

Untangling poverty-related neglect from other types of neglect is a multidimensional and complex challenge. To address this issue, Casey Family Services gives voice to those caught in this intersection: parents and caregivers, researchers, legal advocates, social workers, state child welfare administrators, and policymakers.

When state systems differentiate between poverty and child neglect, they can bring preventive services to bear, rather than removing children from loving families. Furthermore, informed actions improve a state’s ability to promote permanence for youth in foster care.