Opinion: Massive SNAP cuts could mean more children are separated from their families
By Sandy Santana, executive director of Children's Rights, and Kristen Weber, senior director of child welfare at the National Center for Youth Law, this Sept. 29, 2026, opinion piece says the largest SNAP cuts in the program’s history have taken effect around the country, with at least 1.5 million children no longer receiving food assistance. The consequences go beyond hunger: research suggests that when families lose access to food assistance, they may face a greater risk of investigation by child protective services and, ultimately, separation. The authors argue this happens because poverty and neglect are too often conflated in America’s child welfare systems; when parents cannot afford enough food, stable housing, child care, or other necessities, the conditions created by poverty can bring them to CPS attention. Cutting material support can therefore create a perverse and devastating cycle: the government takes away resources families need to care for their children, and then the child welfare system may intervene because families do not have the resources to provide for them.
As a result of the budget reconciliation law known as H.R. 1, which passed last year, the SNAP budget is to be slashed by an estimated $187 billion over the next eight years. The effects are already described as devastating: between July 2025 and April 2026, roughly 5 million people lost access to food assistance. Children are one of the main populations served by SNAP—they make up about 20% of the U.S. population but account for almost 40% of those receiving food assistance. In Arizona, the state with the deepest cuts, nearly half of the children enrolled in the program—180,000 kids—have lost their benefits.
When families cannot consistently provide enough food, that material hardship can be treated as evidence of neglect, bringing families into contact with child protective services. In a statewide study of Illinois over seven years, researchers found that high rates of food insecurity were associated with increased rates of child maltreatment investigations. Nationally, 63% of children with credible maltreatment claims were for neglect alone, with no indication of abuse. According to the latest federal data, more than half of caregivers who come into contact with CPS live under the federal poverty line, and 60% of those caregivers reported receiving food assistance through food stamps or EBT. Poverty-related neglect cases bloat the system and make it harder to identify children at serious risk.
The authors conclude that what those families need is material support. For families experiencing poverty, access to SNAP can be crucial and can help prevent the trauma of unnecessary investigation, surveillance, and separation. Long-term national data has shown that states that previously expanded access to SNAP benefits had reduced numbers of CPS investigations and substantiated reports of abuse and neglect, as well as fewer foster care placements.