Child welfare involvement in large urban centers is deeply shaped by geography. In New York City, disparities in foster care entry rates and placement stability persist across Community Districts despite shared municipal governance. Traditional research has emphasized poverty as the primary driver of child welfare system contact. However, emerging scholarship suggests that spatial access to preventive services and community-based resources may significantly mediate these outcomes.

This study investigates how the distribution of community-based preventive services such as after-school programs, health clinics, and parks correlates with foster care entry rates and placement stability across NYC Community Districts. Grounded in the neighborhood effects framework, this project moves beyond deficit-based mapping of risk and instead evaluates how community assets influence family preservation outcomes. By integrating administrative foster care data with geospatial indicators of service density, the research aims to provide actionable insights for policy reform and resource allocation.

Nisha Shrinivasan

Nisha Shrinivasan