Comparative analysis of state policy-making in child welfare: Explaining policy choices

Kingdon’s three streams of agenda-setting identified in Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies, as well as Schneider and Ingram’s social construction framework, set out in the American Political Science Review, are used to compare four US states’ policy responses following fatalities of children in care. Results suggest that tension between the social construction of children as vulnerable dependents and their troubled families as deviants affects policymakers’ responses and may interfere with systemic policy learning within and across jurisdictions