Recently, a chorus of voices in child welfare have tried to frame the growing national effort to reduce unnecessary family separation as a threat to child safety. But what they are selling isn’t the truth — it’s fear. And that fear fuels a system that too often harms the very children it claims to protect.
Here’s the real truth: Children do best with their families. The child welfare system has for far too long confused poverty with neglect, punishing families who are poor with separation rather than offering the supports that can keep families together safely.
According to federal statistics, 75 percent of child maltreatment cases involve neglect, not abuse. And what’s often labeled as “neglect” is frequently a symptom of poverty: inadequate housing, food insecurity, lack of childcare or missed medical appointments. It’s not a willful failure to care for a child but a lack of resources to do so.
Still, more than one-third of all children in the U.S. experience a child protective services investigation by age 18; that number rises to more than 50 percent for Black children. These investigations are invasive, traumatic and often lead to unnecessary separations. Yet there is little evidence that these disruptions lead to better outcomes.
In fact, research shows the opposite.
A study published in JAMA Pediatrics found that children placed in foster care are more likely to experience mental health issues, struggle in school, and encounter the criminal legal system than their peers who remained at home — even when those peers lived in similarly challenging conditions. The authors concluded that foster care placement can compound the harm children have already experienced, rather than alleviate it.
Critics often invoke child fatalities to justify the current system’s punitive approach, but the data tells a more hopeful — and instructive — story. Child fatalities from maltreatment have actually declined over the past year, while remaining fairly stable over the past five years. Experts point to key preventative factors behind this trend: expanded use of early intervention programs, better risk assessment tools and increased access to basic supports like housing, food and childcare.
One study from Chapin Hall found that for every additional $1,000 per person living in poverty spent on public benefits, child maltreatment fatalities dropped by nearly 8 percent. Rather than evidence for more surveillance, these numbers show that when we invest in families, we save lives.
The uncomfortable truth is that we’ve built a surveillance state around poor families, and we call it “protection.” The mandated reporting system that is the center of child welfare policy is flawed and has led to overreporting of cases. Of the 4.4 million referrals from mandated reporters in 2019, 2 million were screened out, meaning they did not warrant an investigation.
Too often, family supports and child safety are held up as a false dichotomy. We can both support families in a way that helps prevent the need for government intervention and provide the safety measures that protect children where harm is alleged. That includes offering such services as home visiting, child tax credits or housing assistance, because the research is clear: When families have access to basic supports, child maltreatment declines.
Consider the data. In states that implemented the expanded Child Tax Credit in 2021, food insecurity and financial hardship dropped significantly.
Second, a national study by Chapin Hall found that increases in access to such concrete supports as rent assistance and utility aid led to reduced involvement by Child Protective Services.
Third, High-quality home visiting programs, like Nurse-Family Partnership and Healthy Families America, led to a decrease in substantiated reports in child maltreatment by as much as 48 percent.
This isn’t ideology — it’s evidence.
Let’s be clear: There are cases of real, heartbreaking abuse. And yes, some children must be removed from parents for their safety. But these cases are not the norm. The overwhelming majority of families caught in the system are just struggling, not dangerous. And they deserve support, not separation.
We also can’t ignore how disproportionately Black families are reported, investigated and separated from their children. Studies show that even when controlling for income and type of allegation, Black children are more likely to be removed than white children. This isn’t a coincidence — it’s bias, baked into every level of decision-making.
The real truth about child welfare in America is that it’s not keeping all children safe. But it could. It’s time we move from surveillance to support, from punishment to partnership. Because when we give families what they need, we protect children best.
Dr. Melissa Merrick is president and CEO of Prevent Child Abuse America. Dr. Jody Levison-Johnson is president and CEO of Social Current.
