Fractured Families: A Qualitative Study of Deteriorating Kin Support Among Parents in The Child Welfare System

Abstract

Child welfare policy, which predominantly affects poor parents, has increasingly come to value parents’ kin as resources for child protection. At the same time, individuals in poverty have experienced deteriorating kin support and heightened levels of distrust in their communities. In light of these concurrent trends, this thesis evaluates the role of kin support in the lives of parents involved with Child Protective Services (CPS). Drawing on 27 in-depth interviews with parents who experienced CPS cases in New Jersey, this study finds that parents’ fragile and disadvantaged kin networks play an active role in leading parents into the child welfare system. Lacking essential assistance from kin, poor parents then struggle to meet CPS requirements to achieve reunification or other positive case outcomes. Furthermore, CPS intervention often damages parents’ already fragile kin relations. Ultimately, I expose a misalignment between effective CPS intervention, which rests on parents having available, supportive family relationships, and the fractured reality of kin support common among child welfare-involved parents.