By Rebecca Freeman

What happens when a family’s electricity is disconnected? Or when there’s no heat in the winter? Or when the water service is shut off? For many families, these moments of crisis are not only signs of financial hardships, but also potential entry points into the child welfare system. Parents can be reported to child abuse hotlines for experiencing material hardships that may ultimately be labeled and substantiated as neglect. In some cases, neglect substantiation can lead to children being removed from their homes and placed into foster care.

As a former child welfare worker, I saw firsthand how financial hardship can become entangled with child welfare involvement. I worked with families who struggled to pay their electric bills, keep their heat on, or pay water bills while balancing other necessities. In some circumstances, children had to leave their homes, go to hotels, stay with family members, or even enter foster care.

Despite this, the path from utility insecurity to foster care has seen little research. The child welfare data reporting systems do not separately identify utility insecurity as a cause of child welfare involvement and instead fold these circumstances into a broader "neglect" category or "housing-related" category. Despite serious consequences, utility insecurity is essentially invisible in the data.

Neglect versus Poverty

The Urban Institute recently noted that neglect remains a primary driver of child welfare involvement nationwide and emphasized the importance of distinguishing poverty from neglect. Their report stated, “financial inability alone can constitute neglect if an agency determines it caused harm (e.g., hunger or danger) to a child, meaning families may become involved with the child welfare system for reasons rooted in poverty” (Urban Institute, Reducing Child Neglect, 2026).

Research has shown that families living below the poverty line are three times more likely to be substantiated for child maltreatment than families with higher incomes (Drake & Jonson-Reid, 2014). Moreover, over 63% of substantiated maltreatment cases involve neglect without abuse, and nearly four out of five substantiated cases involve neglect either alone or in combination with another maltreatment type (Children’s Bureau, Child Maltreatment 2024).

Although poverty itself is not neglect, poverty can create circumstances where parents are unable to consistently provide basic needs. Despite neglect dominating the child welfare system, it remains understudied and inadequately prevented. If neglect is both the most common reason families become involved with child welfare and one of the least understood, identifying overlooked drivers of neglect, such as utility insecurity, becomes increasingly important.

Growing Energy Unaffordability

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics, rising energy bills have outpaced both inflation and wages. Between 2012 and 2022, Hoosiers experienced a 33% increase in electric utility costs, compared to the national average of 19%. Because heating and cooling account for nearly one-third of household electricity use, rising costs place significant financial strain on families. Approximately 13% of Indiana households experience one electric disconnection each year. Together rising costs, energy burden, and service disconnection threaten household stability, and disproportionately impact families already experiencing financial hardship.

Indiana Community Action Poverty Institute’s 2026 statewide community needs assessments show utility affordability as a top community need, selected by more than 66% of low-income respondents across the state. Economic conditions facing families have become increasingly challenging, especially following the COVID-19 pandemic, combined with inflation. According to the 2026 KIDS COUNT Data Book, by The Annie E. Casey Foundation, Indiana's economic well-being ranking for children fell from 11th to 23rd nationally between 2019-2024. The decline was driven by more Hoosier children living in poverty, and more families struggling with high housing costs, trends reflected in United Way’s recent report showing that more than 38% of Indiana families were earning less than the bare minimum cost of household basics needed to live and work.

Indiana Child Welfare Landscape

Indiana continues to experience significant child welfare involvement despite national improvements in many key indicators. In 2024, Indiana screened-in 99,132 reports made to the child abuse and neglect hotline. Even as the national average trends down, the number of entries into Indiana’s foster care system increased by 30% in 2024, making Indiana the sixth-highest rated in the country. 

Two national child welfare data systems help inform policy and funding choices. The National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS), administered by the Administration of Children and Families (ACF), collects voluntary data on children and caregivers involved in reported abuse and/or neglect, with a focus on safety and prevention. AFCARS, the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System, is a mandatory data collection used to assist in policy development and program management, with a focus on permanency and stability.

At the state level, the Indiana Department of Child Services (DCS) maintains a public Data Dashboard that provides monthly updates on key performance indicators, including assessments, foster care, permanency, and hotline activity. While the dashboard is a valuable transparency tool, it does not allow a breakdown of maltreatment types to distinguish involvement due to abuse or neglect. To understand neglect in Indiana, researchers and policymakers must instead combine information from multiple data sources, including NCANDS and AFCARS, and are still left with significant data gaps that inhibit proactive policy.

While utility insecurity is not inherently absent from child welfare tracking systems, it is essentially hidden within broader categories such as neglect, inadequate housing or homelessness. Thus, a comprehensive tracking and public reporting system is needed to better understand the role of utility insecurity in child welfare cases. Such a system would document when utility insecurity is a condition at the time of child protective services involvement, when it is a contributing factor to a child’s removal, and when it delays or prevents family reunification.

Breaking Down Silos

A growing body of research demonstrates that policies prioritizing family financial stability can play a meaningful role in preventing child welfare involvement. Economic policies such as Earned Income Tax Credit (Berger et al., 2017), minimum wage increases (Raissian and Bullinger, 2017), and child support enforcement (Cancian, Yang, and Slack, 2013) have all been associated with improved financial security for families. Likewise, safety net policies like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Women, Infants, & Children (WIC), are shown to increase protective factors by reducing financial and material hardship and supporting basic needs (Feely et al., 2020). Together, these policies improve family stability and have shown to reduce the risk factors that can lead to child welfare involvement.

When families lose access to electricity, heat, or running water, these circumstances are frequently interpreted through a child-safety lens rather than an economic one. The distinction between poverty and neglect becomes blurred when inability to pay is treated as evidence of unsafe living conditions. In contrast, policy discussions surrounding utility insecurity are often entirely through a financial lens, focused on rising utility costs, household budgeting, and payment assistance programs.

As these issues remain siloed, utility systems continue to view the problem as unpaid bills, and child welfare systems may continue to view the consequences as neglect or unsafe conditions. This disconnect creates a policy opportunity. However, without more precise data collection and cross-system analysis, the true scale of this intersection remains largely invisible – and leaves decision makers with a lot of unknowns.

What We Don’t Know

This data gap has significant consequences. Without standardized data collection, policy makers and child welfare leaders cannot answer fundamental questions, including:

• How many Indiana families are involved with child welfare because utilities have been disconnected?
• Which communities experience the highest rates of utility-related child welfare involvement?
• Are certain racial, ethnic or socioeconomic groups disproportionately affected?
• How often is utility insecurity a contributing factor to child removal versus a barrier to reunification?
• How much could be saved by preventing removals through utility assistance rather than foster care placement?
• Could a utility disconnection moratorium for families with children prevent foster care entries?

In light of the recent Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission (IURC) approval of a $70 million rate increase for AES Indiana customers, it is even more urgent to attend to this intersection. Without data demonstrating how utility unaffordability contributes to child welfare involvement, policymakers cannot fully evaluate and respond to the potential downstream impacts of these rising costs for families. And as electricity demand continues to rise, including with the expansion of AI Data Centers, understanding and quantifying these impacts becomes increasingly crucial.

Ultimately, what is not measured becomes difficult to improve and address through policy. Access to specific data on cases where utility insecurity was a contributing factor could strengthen prevention efforts and inform policy solutions. Better data could strengthen investments in utility assistance programs and other safety net programs. Ultimately, this could mean families having less involvement with the child welfare system and the state having fewer children entering foster care. We would cause less trauma to families, improve child development outcomes, and, most importantly keeping families connected.

Conclusion

Families experiencing utility insecurity are often navigating economic hardships and not intentionally causing harm. Current data systems fail to capture and respond to this reality. While this data is in the dark, policy solutions are ineffective. The child welfare system cannot prevent family separation if it cannot accurately measure the conditions driving the crisis. Better data is not just a research issue; it’s a family issue.

During my time working in child welfare, I repeatedly heard the phrase, “We are a reactive agency, not proactive.” At first, that perspective confused me, but over time I understood the reasoning behind it. Child protective services must balance ensuring child safety with protection of parental rights and avoiding government overreach. Ideally, child protective services should not intervene unless harm or substantial risk of harm has occurred. However, while child welfare intervention itself may remain reactive, child welfare data can and should inform proactive policy solutions.

Recently, my neighborhood in Northern Monroe County was impacted by a tornado that caused significant damage and widespread power outages. The swift response to restore electricity highlighted how deeply our communities recognize utility service as an essential. When power is lost due to natural disasters, restoration is an urgent priority. The challenge now is ensuring our policies reflect the same urgency and priority for families experiencing utility disruptions every day.

By shining light on utility insecurity, Indiana would be better positioned to design policies that improve outcomes for children and families, and most importantly keep families safely together.

This Policy Fellowship was made possible by the Herbert Simon Family Foundation and the Pritzker Children's Initiative.