Maternal Contact With Child Protective Services Associated With Less Postpartum Care In Wisconsin, 2010–19

Maternal involvement with Child Protective Services (CPS) is common around childbirth, particularly for women with economic and health challenges. Federal and state policies aim to improve health care access and use for CPS-involved families, but evidence is needed to understand how CPS contact relates to health care for new mothers. We used linked population-based administrative data, representing all Medicaid-covered births in Wisconsin during the period 2010-19, to produce estimates of the associations of CPS interventions with maternal receipt of postpartum health care. After we adjusted for factors influencing risk for CPS involvement, women whose births were brought to the attention of CPS were around 13 percentage points less likely to receive postpartum care within twelve weeks after delivery, and this relation was present across different levels of CPS intervention and key population subgroups. These findings highlight the need to consider how child welfare and health care policies and practices can support connections with health care for new mothers and their infants.