Understanding Vulnerable Families in Multiple Service Systems

We analyze Illinois families facing multiple barriers and their interactions with public-sector services. Using administrative data from five state agencies to identify families’ receipt of child welfare, mental health, and substance abuse services as well as adult and juvenile incarcerations, we id...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Robert M. Goerge, Emily R. Wiegand
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Russell Sage Foundation 2019-03-01
Series:RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.rsfjournal.org/content/5/2/86
Description
Summary:We analyze Illinois families facing multiple barriers and their interactions with public-sector services. Using administrative data from five state agencies to identify families’ receipt of child welfare, mental health, and substance abuse services as well as adult and juvenile incarcerations, we identify individuals across systems using probabilistic record-linkage techniques, defining family clusters based on networks of individuals who share child welfare and food stamp cases. We show that 23 percent receive services in two or more of these areas. This concentration accounts for 86 percent of the funding for these services used by the entire sample. They experience more and more severe problems. This population is otherwise heterogeneous, engaging with different types of services and clustered in certain parts of the state.
ISSN:2377-8253
2377-8261