Checkpoint: CPS Has To Go
Emily Studer
In the same way that policing predominantly harms Black, Brown, and Indigenous people, Child Protective Services (CPS) predominantly harms families in marginalized communities. Policy makers shape the child welfare system exclusively to remove children from harm. They do not approach the system holistically, accounting for the irreparable damage removing a child from a home does to the child and their family, nor do they consider parents’ rights and the disproportionate harm these systemsimpose on poor and non-white families. There is a fundamental contradiction at the heart of the child welfare system. Their duty is to protect children from harm and neglect, but their primary tool is family separation, which itself inflicts significant injury and can place children into further neglect.
The child welfare system is a massive government institution. In 2024, over 170,000 children entered the foster care system, and the system served more than 500,000 children total. Of those hundreds of thousands of children, Black and Indigenous children are overrepresented. Before they reach the age of 18, 9% of Black children and 11% of Indigenous children will be placed into foster care. In 2019, 22% of children in New York City were Black. That same year, 41% of children involved in CPS investigations and 53% of children in foster care were Black. Time in foster care is associated with myriad detrimental outcomes to children, including increasing their likelihood of being unemployed, homeless, or convicted of a crime. The overrepresentation of marginalized groups in the foster care system points to institutionalized disenfranchisement through family separation and placement of children in foster care.
If a child is in a situation where they are experiencing genuine harm or abuse, they should be removed from that environment, as is CPS’s mandate. According to federal data from 2021, however, 84% of children in the United States who are placed into foster care are removed from their homes for reasons other than abuse. 9% of removals are due to substandard housing. In 2020, the New York City Department of Child Protective Services received reports of children sustaining absences from online classes. Several of these absences were for lack of access to the appropriate technology for remote learning. Whether the report made to CPS for child neglect is related to substandard housing or an online school absence, CPS is punishing poor families for being poor. Rather than offering the solutions to solve these problems — providing access to suitable housing or necessary resources — CPS removes children from families who would like nothing more than to provide a safe home and quality education for their children.
The decision to remove a child from their home is at the discretion of the social worker assigned to the case. While CPS is charged with removing children from environments that are abusive or neglectful, the latter category is especially subjective. Most cases of CPS intervention come from mandatory reporting calls made by school officials and pediatricians. Under this mandatory reporting scheme, Black children with bone fractures are more likely to be reported and supervised for potential abuse, and Black children missing school are more likely to have CPS called for truancy than their white counterparts. CPS investigates families after receiving often anonymous reports, and these families, terrified of losing their children, are scared into cooperation. They inadvertently incriminate themselves by answering questions posed by social workers; they unknowingly relinquish their rights to custody by signing whatever forms filled with legal jargon social workers place in front of them. Social workers and CPS employees aren’t required to inform parents of their rights to an attorney or to remain silent, so anything families say is used against them in court. They often don’t know to seek legal counsel until their children have been taken. Families dealing with CPS tend to be experiencing compounding, compromising factors, including substance abuse, domestic violence, homelessness, physical and mental health challenges, and general poverty and poor living conditions. By adding the risk of family separation into that mix, CPS is essentially punishing these families for struggling. When CPS’s primary tool is family separation, there’s little priority given to providing the material assistance that would allow families to improve their own children’s situations.
After children are removed from their families by CPS, those families face insurmountable obstacles to regain custody of their children. These obstacles include regular trips to faraway courthouses and offices for interviews, court dates, counseling, anger management classes, and drug tests— incredibly difficult for poor parents who don’t have access to reliable transportation or who are working multiple jobs to support themselves. Black parents and children are, again, disproportionately disadvantaged by the child welfare system, and, according to the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, “Black children receive fewer and poorer quality services, are separated from their families for longer periods, are less likely to be reunified, and are significantly less likely to be adopted when reunification is unlikely.”
The problems presented by the child welfare system will not be resolved with abolition. There must be a framework to remove children from systems of genuine harm. The current system, however, leaves significant opportunity for reform. One avenue is requiring social workers and CPS agents to alert parents under investigation to their rights, similar to Miranda Rights in a criminal arrest. Parents should be told that they have the right to remain silent, the right to an attorney, and the right not to allow entry into their homes. Another potential solution is ending anonymous reporting. In New York City in 2023, over 4,000 anonymous reports of child mistreatment were made to CPS. Only 7% of those calls were substantiated, a markedly lower number than the 22.5% of all child welfare investigations deemed credible that year. Requiring that people include their names when reporting neglect or abuse, even with the caveat that no identifying information be disclosed unless mandated by a judge, would deter use of calling CPS as a form of retribution or harassment.
Some states have already begun to implement child welfare reforms. Texas, for example, passed House Bill 7 in 2018 that prohibited CPS from removing children from a home exclusively due to parents’ low-income status. House Bill 7 included other child welfare provisions and spurred a wave of similarly beneficial laws over the next five years. Since 2018, in Texas the annual numbers of children removed from homes by CPS and of child deaths from abuse and neglect are down 55% and 53%, respectively.
It is integral and an issue of racial and economic justice that the system undergoes a shift in focus from surveillance and punishment to providing resources and education. Social resources proven to improve the situations of children experiencing neglect include earned income tax credit, child tax credits, providing free breakfast and lunch in school, and free meals to children during the summers, subsidized low-income housing, easily accessible mental health resources, expansion of Medicaid coverage, and universal childcare programs. Struggling parents need help, not the threat of separation from their children.
