Proof Over Precedent

This week, Proof Over Precedent speaks with Melody Webb, Founder and Executive Director of the Mother’s Outreach Network, a Washington, DC-based racial justice and anti-poverty organization that the Access to Justice Lab partnered with in its Mother Up pre-pilot study. Webb shares her vision for the study—which looks at providing Black indigent mothers with guaranteed income to support their children in an effort to reduce child welfare agency involvement—and offers perspective on the preliminary findings from the pilot.

A2J Lab Director and Professor Jim Greiner sat down with five A2J Lab staff members to discuss “Mother Up”, a DC guaranteed income pre-pilot program with Mothers Outreach Network for Black mothers with recent CFSA involvement. The privately funded program explored how feasible it would be to conduct a larger study on the subject of guaranteed income, but this episode of Proof Over Precedent looks into why the Lab got involved with the program, how we gathered and analyzed data to apply to future evidence-leading studies, and what we’re seeing with results so far.

The Empower Parents with Resources Study is the largest randomized control trial of the effect of unrestricted cash gifts on child maltreatment in the United States. Researchers aim to find out if a reduction in financial stress equals a reduction in child welfare involvement. In this week’s Proof Over Precedent episode, HLS J.D. candidate Julia Saltzman interviews researcher William Schneider, who explains the broad impact the study may have on families, caseworkers, and child welfare policy.