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This paper reflects the narratives of families receiving a monthly unconditional cash transfer in addition to targeted child protection services. Using a participatory monitoring and evaluation method, the program recorded how the participating families defined domains of child and family well-being. After 15 months, the families reported experiencing lower stress, providing more nutritious meals, and spending more time with children, and gave specific examples of using what they had learned in the program about more effective parenting.
The success of unconditional cash transfers (UCT) in reducing poverty around the world has prompted an uptick in utilization across the United States (Shah & Gennetian, 2024; West et al., 2021). Child welfare specialists and advocates for families and children had already recommended that U.S. programs address poverty directly through cash transfers, given the large majority of child welfare cases that are indicated on the basis of findings resulting exclusively from the consequences of poverty (Conrad et al., 2020; Freidman & Rohr, 2023; Grinnell et al., 2023; Dettlaff, 2021; Webb, 2021). UCT are payments given without conditions that do not interfere with any other services or benefits that a family receives (Yoshino et al., 2023). They are distinct from other types of cash assistance that reward families for specific behaviors such as school attendance. COVID-19-related programs providing cash for families with children in the United States found great success in reducing child poverty and led to a proliferation of such programs from 2021 onward (Shah & Gennetian, 2024). What had not been studied was the question of whether families recovering from such experiences as intimate partner violence, physical and sexual abuse, or other specific harms could also benefit from the addition of unconditional cash to the services that they already receive.
The leadership of Forestdale, Inc., a midsized family service and child welfare agency in Queens, New York, was eager to address this question. Supported by a private donor, the organization decided to add UCT to the services received by families who had been affected by violence and were living in poverty. They also added a participatory monitoring and evaluation exercise to learn whether and how UCT affected the families.
Based on the cost of living in Queens, New York, and the funds allocated, recipients were slated...