The U.S. child welfare system investigates roughly 4 million families each year for alleged child maltreatment. Despite its expansive reach, this policy system has been the subject of widely publicized critiques, with charges of bureaucratic failures, inefficacy and mismanagement, and systemic biases overshadowing child welfare policy, practice, and research in recent years. In the face of such criticism, practical pathways to address concerns have been insufficient or ineffective. This mixed methods dissertation critically explores early stages of the child welfare system with the goal of identifying areas to intervene with policy or practice to improve system outcomes. The study comprises three papers which examine child welfare from diverse perspectives, focusing on varying and intersecting dimensions of four broad factors: poverty, place, race, and bureaucracy. Paper 1 examines how county-level poverty rates, racial composition, urbanicity types, and child welfare and safety net policy provisions are associated with rates of child welfare investigations and substantiations, and how these associations vary by urbanicity. To explore these questions, I analyze 15 years of administrative child welfare data merged with American Community Survey data. Results indicate that place plays a significant moderating role in the influence of aggregate demographic and policy variables on investigation and substantiation rates, with significantly different effects of these predictors across urban, suburban, and rural counties. These contrasting findings across place illuminate regions where targeting specific reforms or practices may be useful in addressing child welfare disparities and insufficiencies. Paper 2 explores how parents who are investigated for child maltreatment also experience financial hardships associated with poverty governance. I analyze qualitative data from 21 interviews with child welfare-impacted parents in a Midwestern state to describe how parents experienced income loss tied to compliance with child welfare system requirements through three poverty governance-related mechanisms: (1) lost jobs and lost job hours due to scheduling precarity, (2) forced child support payments to the state and/or garnished wages, and (3) reduced public benefits and social service eligibility. These mechanisms posed substantial barriers to family well-being and reunification, creating distinct harms for low-income families. Paper 3 examines how place functions as a component of the human service organizational environment, and thus shapes street-level bureaucrat decision-making in the context of child welfare. I analyze qualitative interview data from child welfare investigators and supervisors (n=24) embedded in a comparative case study of four public child welfare offices in one Midwestern State. I find that place influences decision-making of street-level workers in child welfare through its effect on regional service arrays, geographic distance and time, and local politics. I conclude that street-level theory should further incorporate the notion of place, particularly given how it affects decision-making differentially in urban, suburban, and rural regions. While much of the existing child welfare literature treats disparate outcomes and systemic challenges in child welfare as homogenous and universal, this study makes clear that the intersections of place, bureaucratic structures and policies, bureaucratic decision-making, income, and race create unique child welfare policy experiences and outcomes for families. Policy implications such as place-specific reforms and revisions of public benefit and child support regulations are discussed, along with implications for social work research and practice.