I’m the CEO of Brightpoint, formerly Children’s Home & Aid, a child and family services organization that has served Illinois for more than 142 years. We partner with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services on the nation’s largest guaranteed income pilot for families involved with the child welfare system.

The Jan. 2 op-ed by professors Sarah A. Font and Emily Putnam-Hornstein (“Does providing money to parents who have mistreated kids improve child welfare?”) criticizes this pilot and then broadens into a wholesale dismissal of cash assistance in child welfare.

Illinois deserves credit — not derision — for asking hard, testable questions about how to keep children safe and families together. That is precisely what this pilot is doing.

No one involved in this study claims that cash assistance is the only or even the best solution for child maltreatment. That argument was invented for the op-ed, not by the researchers actually running the pilot. The real question under examination is far more basic. If poverty contributes — directly or indirectly — to child neglect, what happens when families involved with the child welfare system receive unconditional cash support for a limited period of time?

If the link between poverty and neglect were settled science, this study would be unnecessary. It is not. And that uncertainty should invite curiosity, not premature certainty — especially from researchers.

Our pilot, led by researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of Connecticut, follows 800 families. Half will receive an average of $500 per month for 12 months. All participating families already receive Intact Family Services, a voluntary prevention program designed to stabilize families before crises escalate and children enter foster care. The overwhelming majority of child welfare hotline reports involve neglect, not abuse.

Testing whether modest, time-limited cash assistance improves family stability alongside existing services is not reckless. Refusing to test it, despite unresolved evidence and persistent system failure, would be.

Since our founding in 1883, child welfare has advanced because people were willing to challenge assumptions and replace certainty with inquiry. Progress has never come from standing still while families struggle under conditions we only partially understand.

Progress depends on people willing to ask hard questions and follow the evidence where it leads. The data will speak. We should be prepared to listen.

— Mike Shaver, president and CEO, Brightpoint, Chicago

Influence of environment

All families have problems; every income level, tax bracket, ethnicity. The complexity of family problems for “the impoverished” are bundled into drivers such as not being employed full time and dealing with drug addiction, mental illness and family violence. Each of these drivers also occur in families that can keep their traumas private.

Why are two social work professors only thinking in terms of behaviors? Taking a closer look at the societal environments that overshadow low-income communities must be in the equation when sincerely working to stop child abuse. Social work needs to consider the community.

Have you ever not had enough? Not just to eat but to hope for? Have you ever been without? Not just material items but without connection? There is no such thing as being poor in a bubble. Lack of income is a contagion that infects self-worth, confidence and the ability to be present in life. Infected for generations, communities in poverty are drawn down into survival mode. Not flourishing, not thriving; just surviving.

According to a June 2021 CNBC article, when parents were given money during COVID-19 relief efforts, parents used it on basic needs. Food insufficiencies dropped by 42%, and financial insufficiencies dropped by 43% in households with children. Parents also used relief funds for educational and extracurricular supports and emergency savings. The article states that families’ mental health improved.

Money reduces the viral load of poverty and increases hope and connection, two elements that are needed in every family, every community.

Children need everything we can give to keep them safe. Giving people money means someone may not make the right decisions every time. That also applies when people earn money. We elect people to power over our tax dollars; they don’t make the right decisions every time and can still get reelected. It happens; we pick up the pieces and look at the progress we made, adjust and move forward.

The same thing can apply to financial assistance programs.

I have consulted with each national philanthropic organization mentioned; I know they talk to people who are experiencing situations in real time. It takes effort; heart work is hard work. To listen for understanding, you must be willing to set aside preconceived notions and dispose of as much implicit bias as possible. Professors, maybe there’s a class you can take. Or come to a Be Strong Families Café!

— Tecoria Jones, board secretary, Be Strong Families, Chicago

A confounding campaign

For many years, public policy efforts to support child welfare have received bipartisan support. During the first Donald Trump administration, for example, Congress passed the landmark Family First Prevention Services Act, leading to unprecedented federal funding for evidence-based interventions that would keep families together and prevent children from going into foster care. But now the American Enterprise Institute enters the fray, ignoring the evidence that mistreatment is often rooted in the lack of housing, food and other basic resources.

The recent op-ed by professors Sarah A. Font and Emily Putnam-Hornstein is part of a confounding national publicity campaign against cash and other support programs that would help some families stay on their feet and stay together. Such op-eds are popping up with the same anti-family messages delivered by different authors.

As a former foster parent who has worked in child welfare most of my adult life, and as an American who is as distressed by the national divisions as most other citizens, I am at a loss for why a think tank would want to fan flames of division over child well-being.

Is no area of public policy safe from this toxicity?

— Marrianne McMullen, Chicago

Program’s positive effects

The op-ed by the two professors claims that “a recently released evaluation found that recipients of the cash transfers (from the Rx Kids program) found that recipients of the cash transfers were no less likely to have allegations of child maltreatment during the first six months of life.” The authors don’t cite their source, so I went on Google Scholar and searched for RxKids. I found the study they were referring to, which is a preprint that has not been peer-reviewed. Other studies I found reported positive effects of the program, including a preprint that found that “after implementation of Rx Kids in 2024, the maltreatment allegation rate dropped to 15.5% in Flint, falling below the maltreatment allegation rate of 20.6% among the control cities.” Other studies found benefits such as reductions in preterm birth and low birthweight and diaper hardship.

— Michael Kaiser-Nyman, Chicago

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