The Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University hosted Kelley Fong for a Poverty & Social Policy Seminar to discuss her current research focused on Child Protective Services as a state response to families facing adversity drawing on administrative data as well as fieldwork with mothers, state social workers, and professionals mandated to report child maltreatment.
About Kelley Fong
Kelley Fong received her Ph.D. in sociology and social policy from Harvard University in 2020. She studied social inequality and family life, with particular attention to family-state relations in contexts of poverty and inequality. Much of her current research focuses on Child Protective Services (CPS). Beyond CPS, Kelley also studied families’ residential and school selection. Before beginning her graduate studies, she contributed to multi-method research on community college reforms and worked on impact litigation to reform child welfare systems. She has also advocated for youth in foster care and assisted self-represented litigants in housing and family law clinics. Her work has been published in Social Forces, Sociology of Education, Sociological Forum, Child Abuse & Neglect, and Children & Youth Services Review.