What Child Protection Is For

Abstract

The legacy of racial injustice is evident in all aspects of our society, including rates of child abuse and neglect. As communities seek to remedy disparities, activists are demanding that we “abolish” the child protection system. Without question, the current system for protecting children can and should be improved. Strengthening families in a manner that respects freedom from government overreach is important. But the claims made by those calling for the abolition of our child protection system range from questionable to demonstrably false. There are important reasons why countries across the globe—large and small, wealthy and poor, racially diverse and racially homogenous—have child protection systems. And while expanded prevention is important, there is no evidence it will negate the need for a system whose charge is first and foremost protecting children. We caution policymakers against acceding to demands that ultimately place broader, long-term societal goals above the near-term protection of children from abuse and neglect.

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Introduction

Recently, the Child Protective Services (CPS) system and its workforce have come under attack by a self-described “movement”¹ of vocal advocates.² The advocates, who describe themselves as “abolitionists,” call for “the complete elimination of the existing family policing system,”³ their term for the system responsible for responding to allegations of child abuse and neglect. They offer little clarity as to what would replace CPS as a means of protecting children, except that any new system would focus almost exclusively on primary prevention and would exist at the “community” level.⁴

The abolitionists demand the elimination of foster care and congregate care, mandated reporting of maltreatment (by teachers and doctors, for instance), drug testing of infants and new mothers, a removal of timelines for reunification, and a decrease of police involvement in domestic violence (because it leads to more reporting of child maltreatment). They claim that all of these policies emerge from an American legacy of slavery, colonialism, and genocide and have a disparate impact on families of color—and are therefore racist.

The abolitionist argument is comprised of three central claims: (1) Black children are overrepresented in CPS, (2) CPS harms children and thus disproportionately harms Black children, and (3) if we simply expanded social safety nets and prevention programs, we would eliminate the need for CPS. We all agree that CPS is imperfect and needs meaningful reform, including more supports for families outside the formal system, consistent definitions and well-defined responses from CPS, and quality legal representation when the state exercises its power to intervene in families. But the abolitionist movement is simple and misguided. As a nonpartisan group of researchers and practitioners with experience in all aspects of the child welfare system—from CPS to family courts to foster care agencies—we feel compelled to explain why child protection is needed and respond to the fundamental flaws of the abolitionist movement’s claims.

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Notes

1. Alan J. Dettlaf et al., “It Is Not a Broken System, It Is a System That Needs to Be Broken: The upEND Movement to Abolish the Child Welfare System,” Journal of Public Child Welfare 14, no. 5 (2020): 500–17; and Dorothy Roberts, Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare (New York: Civitas Books, 2009).
2. Mical Raz, Alan Dettlaff, and Frank Edwards, “The Perils of Child ‘Protection’ for Children of Color: Lessons from History,” Pediatrics 148, no. 1 (2021).
3. Dettlaf et al., “It Is Not a Broken System, It Is a System That Needs to Be Broken.”
4. Alan J. Dettlaff et al., “How We endUP: A Future Without Family Policing,” upEND, June 18, 2021, http://upendmovement.org/ wp-content/uploads/2021/06/How-We-endUP-6.18.21.pdf.