DC mothers accused of child neglect to get cash as part of poverty study

A group of low-income black mothers living in Washington DC who have been accused of child neglect will receive cash as part of a study to determine whether providing needy moms with extra income could prevent their children from being placed in foster care.

A dozen black mothers randomly selected by researchers from Harvard Law School’s Access to Justice Lab will receive $500 a month through October — and then a lump sum payment of about $3,000, The Washington Post reported.

The women selected have been investigated by the district’s Child and Family Services Agency for alleged child neglect, the report said.

Another 12 mothers will be paid $50 to $60 for participating in a 20-minute survey and up to an hour-long interview with the Mother’s Outreach Network, which is distributing the funds.

“For this particular problem, folks are in a form of legal jeopardy,” Jim Greiner, the faculty director at Harvard’s Access to Justice Lab, said of parents accused of child neglect.

“There’s a lot of strong feelings on both sides — and what we think should happen in that case is evidence,” he said. “Let’s actually look at what happens when you take steps to alleviate poverty.”

Greiner said the Mother Up program will be limited to black mothers whom the Child and Family Services Agency investigated for child neglect and found the accusations to be substantiated, but still allowed their children to remain in the home.

The Mother Up program is still in the “pre-planning” phase, but will now start enrolling eligible mothers to receive the funds.

Greiner acknowledged there may be backlash to the program from those who think “it’s a terrible idea because it’s going to provide a monetary incentive to neglect children.”

But, he said, others “think that the underlying problem is poverty, in which case, providing money is a fantastic idea because it’ll directly alleviate the problem.”

One such advocate, Clare Anderson, a senior policy research fellow at the University of Chicago’s Chapin Hall, said decades of research have proven that when families have less access to money, clothing, housing, food, legal support and health care, they are more likely to face child welfare investigations.

Another study, she said, shows that nearly 85% of families investigated by child welfare agencies have incomes below 200% of the federal poverty line — which was $49,720 for a family of three in 2023.

“There’s this societal narrative that child abuse and neglect is an individual action by an individual doing harm to a child,” Anderson told the Washington Post.

“The evidence shows us that policy choices are contributing significantly to the activation and deployment of CPS in the lives of families.”

Robert Matthews, the director of DC’s Child and Family Services, also said he has “no doubt that poverty plays a huge role in how most of the families come to CFSA’s attention.”

Last year, the department separated 10 children from their families due to neglect — making it the most cited reason a child was removed from their home, the Washington Post reports, citing the agency’s report to the DC city council.

Of the children currently in foster care in DC, a majority are black, it reports.

“The system is penalizing families for being poor,” said Melody Wood, executive director of Mother’s Outreach Network.

“We also want to combat negative narratives about black women, black mothers in particular, whose children are involved in the system,” she noted.