Meeting housing needs of child welfare-involved families: Policy insights from simulation modeling

Background: Inadequate housing contributes to the risk of family separation in nearly one-quarter of child maltreatment investigations. Child welfare struggles to identify and address the demand for housing assistance. A range of housing interventions shows promise for stabilizing families. Still, aid remains difficult to access, and little evidence exists for prioritizing households to interventions. Inefficient decisions about who to serve with scarce housing resources threaten to diminish resources and unintentionally place children at greater risk.

Objective: The present study leverages computational modeling to simulate the complex dynamics of coordinated child welfare response to inadequate housing. Simulations address the lack of microdata on current service delivery to inform policy-making that protects children from family insecurity.

Participants and settings: A series of simulated policy experiments test strategies for maximizing access to appropriate housing assistance and minimizing system-wide family separations using US estimates of housing insecurity and child welfare involvement. Models incorporate the feedback loops involved in seeking and waiting for needed services, using information on national rates of housing insecurity among child welfare-involved families.

Results: Results demonstrate population-level improvements in family stability from enhanced targeting of housing assistance to families most likely to benefit, plus expanded access to housing interventions. Neither improved screening procedures nor more housing supports alone improve child welfare outcomes.

Conclusions: Findings emphasize the importance of data-driven upstream policies for protecting inadequately housed children at risk of maltreatment.