Tragedy In Child Protective Services (CPS)

Tragedy in Child Protection

There are many flaws throughout the child welfare system that can hinder its overall goal of protecting children. There have been several cases in child protection that have resulted in tragedy, either within the foster care system itself, or in the child’s biological home.

Child Protective Services (CPS) is a government agency that exists to protect children from neglect and/or maltreatment. The purpose of CPS is to ensure that the child is in a safe environment. There are a considerable amount of cases where CPS workers did not protect the children by not placing them in adequate environments. Once a child is reported as being abused or neglected, an investigation is conducted to determine if any type of harm was

A number of families, where CPS workers intervened several times, were subject to child maltreatment and/or neglect, which eventually caused something fatal and/or tragic to occur in either their biological and/or foster care home (Arizona Republic, 2008; The Associated Press, 2015; Bauer, 2012). If CPS workers “[lose] track of [these families]” (Roberts, 2008), which were reported to be an unsafe environment for a child, the child could potentially endure something fatal, such as his/her “remains [washing] up on the… shoreline” (The Associated Press, 2015), being “punched in the face until [he/she passes] out” (Roberts, 2008), being a victim of shaken-baby syndrome, “in which shaking an infant or young child inflicts brain and neck injuries” (Berk, 2012), being “starved, suffocated, burned”(The Denver Post, 2013), etc. If CPS workers miss crucial signs of neglect and/or maltreatment, by performing “drive-by social work” (The Associated Press, 2015), it can lead to tragedies and fatalities amongst children. For example, in New York City it is “the [city’s]…duty to protect [a child] when a Family Court judge [orders] caseworkers to visit [him/her] every two weeks and monitor [their parents-rearing]” (McKinley Jr., 2014); therefore, protecting the child from unsafe environments becomes the job of the city and/or state, which is the employer of

The first is the Federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA), which attempt to protect children from maltreatment and neglect. CAPTA provides state guidelines to determine child abuse and neglect, based on a set of behaviors. For example, a child can be neglected and/or maltreated still in the mother’s womb because the child was “prenatally exposed to illegal substances” (Price, Bergin, et al, 2012). Thus, in this instance professionals who are aware of this occurrence are required to report it to CPS, specifically under CAPTA because of the guidelines that are enforced to protect these children from neglect and/or maltreatment. Another is the Protect Our Kids Act. Congress passed this legislation in 2012, which enables the President and Congressional leaders to designate a group of people to determine strategies to help reduce child abuse and neglect tragedies and fatalities (Congress Passes Protect Our Kids Act to Reduce Child Abuse Fatalities,