Child Protective Services as Gateway and Gatekeeper in the New Welfare State

Kelley Fong; Nora McCarthy

doi:10.7758/RSF.2026.12.1.05

Article Information

vol. 12 no. 1 122-143

DOI

https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2026.12.1.05

Published By

RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences

Print ISSN

2377-8253

Online ISSN

2377-8261

History

Published online May 13, 2026.

© 2026 Russell Sage Foundation. Fong, Kelley, and Nora McCarthy. 2026. “Child Protective Services as Gateway and Gatekeeper in the New Welfare State.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 12(1): 122–43. https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2026.12.1.05. We are grateful for the generosity of the research participants and agency staff in Connecticut and New York City who made this research possible. We also thank those who provided thoughtful comments on previous drafts, including some research participants, the NYC Family Policy Project Community Research Advisory Board, staff at Rise, child welfare leaders, and the RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences peer reviewers and editors. Analyses, interpretations, and conclusions are our own and do not necessarily reflect the Connecticut Department of Children and Families’ or the New York City Administration for Children’s Services’ views. Direct correspondence to: Kelley Fong, at kelley.fong{at}uci.edu, 4189 Social Science Plaza A, Irvine, CA 92617, United States. Open Access Policy: RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences is an open access journal. This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Author Information

Kelley Fong^a and
Nora McCarthy^b

^aAssistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine, United States
^bDirector of the NYC Family Policy Project, New York, New York, United States