“Because I’m Young”: Experiences of Young Mothers with Child Welfare Involvement

Adolescent and young adult mothers face multiple well-documented challenges. Among mothers investigated by child welfare in Ontario, there are high concentrations of poverty, housing instability, social isolation, and mental health issues. These concerns are associated with more intrusive and persistent child welfare involvement. However, less is known about their lived experiences within the system, including how they perceive the reasons for and the impact of their involvement. This study will begin to address this knowledge gap. Twenty-one young mothers who experienced child welfare involvement in Ontario while pregnant or parenting participated in semi-structured interviews. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to explore how young mothers understood their involvement with child welfare. The findings revealed that mothers believed the primary reason for their heightened surveillance in the community was their youth. Their age was associated with the circumstances that triggered an investigation, including their living and caregiving situations, their previous history of child welfare involvement, and their financial and social circumstances. Mothers were told that they were being investigated and monitored because of potential risks to their young children and that this was due to their age, but workers and agencies rarely provided services and supports that could have mitigated these risks or offset the challenging circumstances these mothers were facing. These findings suggest that meaningfully addressing the challenges of early parenthood in settings less characterized by coercion and surveillance is warranted. There is a need for well-resourced approaches to better support young families at risk of child welfare involvement.