Reunifying Families, Cutting Costs: Housing-Child Welfare Partnerships for Permanent Supportive Housing

In the absence of an adequate supply of affordable, quality housing, child welfare agencies are placed in the unenviable position of separating families to protect children from the debilitating effects of homelessness. This article presents recommendations for cost-effective housing-child welfare partnerships that will shift the burden of providing adequate housing back to housing agencies. These partnerships have the potential to move child welfare agencies closer to achieving permanence and well-being for all children. In the absence of an adequate supply of affordable, quality housing units, child welfare agencies find themselves in the unenviable position of separating families to protect children from the debilitating effects of homelessness. Child welfare agencies will not be able to meet the permanency standards set forth in the Adoptions and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA; RL. 96-272) until they place children who are in care primarily due to a lack of housing with their families in permanent supportive housing. Child welfare agencies lack the capacity to provide permanent supportive housing, but even more fundamentally, they lack the mandate to do so. Housing agencies are responsible for providing housing for families, whereas child welfare agencies are responsible for providing services and ensure the safety and wellbeing of children and families. Unfortunately, the issues of a crisis in affordable housing, a decreasing real minimum wage, and an increasing number of families in poverty mean that workers must place many children in foster care primarily because they lack adequate housing. Child welfare agencies should not and cannot do the job of both housing and child welfare; the onus of providing safe, affordable housing to families must be returned to housing agencies. This article identifies the forces that have created this situation and proposes establishing a partnership between housing and child welfare agencies that could save as much as $1.94 billion annually while providing permanence for many more children. Background Child Welfare and Housing Most families can successfully and safely care for their children in their own homes with the proper assistance (CWLA, n.d.); however, the current child welfare funding structure prioritizes maintaining children in out-of-home care over preserving them in their homes (Cornerstone, 1999). Few, if any, housing resources are available to child welfare workers; as a result, workers frequently use foster care as a stopgap measure to ensure the safety of children who lack adequate housing. This is a costly solution to homelessness, both in terms of the emotional effect on each child and the cost to the taxpayer. Nationally, the average family in the child welfare system has 2.7 children (Doerre & Mihaly, 1996). The average annual cost to the United States of keeping the children of one family of this size in foster care is approximately $45,377/ although this number varies widely by state. Approximately 30% of children in foster care are there primarily due to a lack of housing (Doerre & Mihaly, 1996; Hagedorn, 1995; Thoma, 1998). Agencies find that most of their federal funds (specifically from Title IV-E) are for maintaining poor children in foster care, leaving child welfare agencies with few options to ameliorate a family's living situation. Partially as a result of this funding structure and partially as a result of their poverty, homeless and impoverished families are more likely to come into contact with the child welfare system (Billings, Moore, & McDonald, 2003; Shook, 1999). Workers are more likely to place children with housing problems in foster care than other children (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services [HHS], 1997). Neglect is the primary reason children enter foster care (Badeau & Gesiriech, 2003; Petit et al., 1999), and inadequate housing is one of the main causes of neglect (Badeau & Gesiriech, 2003). …