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Blanca Ramirez

Professor Briones

English 1302-228

7 March 2024

Child Protective Services: Corrupt System

Child Protective Services (CPS) is an agency that carries out investigations to help

provide protection for children at risk of harm within their homes. Their job is to respond to

cases where neglect such as abuse, food restrictions, dirty repetitive clothing, etc. have been

reported and start an investigation to immediately remove the child to safety. Although CPS is

the known agency to call when there are concerns of misconduct, they do not always respond to

the case. Research has indicated that in 2010, 3.3 million cases of alleged child neglect were

reported to CPS and only 2 million were deemed appropriate by CPS for investigation (Camasso

and Jagannathan 1636). The media has revealed many horrific cases of maltreatment under CPS

supervision because the case was not deemed as important as other cases. There have been many

reports of public agencies’ failure to provide a safety net for these children who are suffering

from abuse in their homes (Camasso and Jagannathan 1637). Today, people are bringing

awareness to be able to better the system by coming out with documentaries of many cases

where it resulted in death because CPS could not do their job to protect the child. Millions of

families, mostly poor and families of color, are investigated every year due to reports of neglect.

CPS agents do welfare checks at the homes to collect data on the conditions (Fong 630). The

findings in this study showed that not all CPS cases require the child to be separated from the

family, they just require wide surveillance (Fong 630).

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The Child Protective Services system is implemented to protect victims of abuse and

protect them from abuse ever happening again. Although CPS does its best efforts to keep abuse

from reoccurring there are many cases where CPS is no longer involved, and the parents start to

implement maltreatment once again resulting in rereporting to CPS (Bae, Solomon, et al 34).

Authors Bae, Solomon, Gelles, and White conducted a study that followed 67,243 families who

had been rereported to CPS over 5.4 years. They found that 14,218 out of the 67,243 had one or

more child abuse reports. During the research they conduct certain factors that may be the result

of the reoccurring abuse, the main one having exposure to CPS. They found that rereporting

cases is often due to the history of abuse (Bae, Solomon, et al 35). The result of reported cases

often results in the child being taken away from the home and put into foster care. However, the

main goal of CPS is to reunite children with their parents when the home is safe again. Authors

Font, Sattler, and Gershoff created a study to examine how substance abuse and mental health

issues can result in the reentry of foster care. The study showed that foster care children who

were taken back to their families within 12 months of entering were more likely to reenter. Once

a child is in foster care for 15 to 22 months the state files for termination of parental rights

despite their best efforts (Font, Sattler, et al 1334).

When conducting an investigation, CPS's common focus is the safety of the home so they

may question an individual with such concerns: Are the children happy, is the fridge and pantry

filled with food, does the home have AC, do the children have a selection of clothing, do the

children have beds to sleep on and blankets to cover themselves with, etc. Authors Hirsch, Yang,

Font, and Slack began a study that presented low-income families and their housing conditions

and their association with child maltreatment. The study showed that hazardous physical housing

conditions did play a factor in the reports of CPS involvement. Less advantaged families were
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investigated by CPS than those who have never had a visitation from CPS (Hirsch, Yang, et al

96). Therefore, low-income mothers have begun to fear their encounter with CPS. This major

factor raises concerns for poor mothers who are vulnerable to CPS since they are at a major

disadvantage (Fong 1785). Many mothers who were confident in their parenting were fearful of

interacting with mandated systems such as healthcare, education, etc. because of how they

presented themselves. CPS can be called for numerous reasons even when there is no abuse for

instance, when a child shows up to school in dirty clothes that seems that it has not been washed

in days it flags a red flag. Poor families often wear hand-me-downs because for them it is better

to spend the money on food than on clothes, which is understandable. However, when people

witness how people dress, they automatically assume the child is being neglected which results

in an investigation. Poor mothers barely have the money to provide a roof over their heads and to

make their children the number one priority, but they still must live with the fear that their

children will be removed from the household (Fong 1786).

Foster care is a temporary system for children who have been taken away from their

families for abuse or other factors. In most cases, CPS does its best to reunite children with their

families which gets them out of the system, but in other cases, children stay in the system until

they age out which is between the ages of 18 and 21. Fostered children who are teenagers are

less likely to be adopted, due to them already being older than others in the system. Authors

Farmer, Heyman, Kelly, and Leaman conducted a study to examine the possible factors of

homelessness. The study showed that youths placed in foster care were at higher risk of

becoming homeless by age 19 than those who ran away, were in a group care setting, endured

physical abuse, in delinquent behavior, and whom who did not have a secure connection with

biological parents. These factors were confirmed by Dworsky and colleagues in 2013 (Farmer,
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Heyman, et al 5). With, suicide is the second leading cause of death in adolescents between the

ages of 10 and 19. Authors Kahn, Wilcox, and Stuart investigate the possible risk factors. They

first studied adolescents in foster care who had been previously investigated for abuse. Many

children in the system often suffer self-harm because they feel worthless since their parents could

not do better for them. Adolescents are deeply affected when placed into foster care and they

endure numerous emotions. Sometimes those emotions overpower them and are shown as a

vulnerability. Foster care makes children feel lonely and disappointed that they did not reach the

level of respect from their families resulting in self-harm. However, 42% of the study odds of

self-harm among CPS involved youths who had a good relationship with an adult than those who

didn’t (Kahn, Wilcox, et al 179).

In conclusion, Child Protective Services is a good agency in the sense that millions of

children are being saved from maltreatment. The system has failed many children who have

suffered death and horrific abuse because CPS deemed them not appropriate enough to

investigate. Although there are many benefits to having CPS, they are also in a way harming

many children. Many factors are associated with maltreatment within a home and how the

children are the ones more affected than the parents. Moreover, children who have been reported

to CPS and are placed in safety care are more likely to do self-harm due to them being taken

away from their families.

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Works Cited

Bae, Hwa-ok, et al. "Effect of Child Protective Services System Factors on Child Maltreatment

Rereporting." Child welfare 89.3 (2010): 33-55. ProQuest. Web. 30 Jan. 2024.

Camasso, Michael J., and Radha Jagannathan. “Decision Making in Child Protective Services: A

Risky Business?” Risk analysis 33.9 (2013): 1636–1649. Web.

Farmer, G. L., et al. "Prevalence of Risk and Protective Factors for Homelessness among Youth

in Foster Care." Child welfare 99.1 (2021): 1-23. ProQuest. Web. 30 Jan. 2024.

Fong, Kelley. “Concealment and Constraint: Child Protective Services Fears and Poor Mothers’

Institutional Engagement.” Social Forces, vol. 97, no. 4, 2019, pp. 1785–810. JSTOR,

https://www.jstor.org/stable/26732919. Accessed 31 Jan. 2024.

Fong, Kelley. “Getting Eyes in the Home: Child Protective Services Investigations and State

Surveillance of Family Life.” American Sociological Review, vol. 85, no. 4, 2020, pp.

610–38. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/48595835. Accessed 31 Jan. 2024.

Font, Sarah A., Kierra M. P. Sattler, and Elizabeth Gershoff. "When Home is Still Unsafe: From

Family Reunification to Foster Care Reentry." Journal of Marriage and Family 80.5

(2018): 1333-43. ProQuest. Web. 30 Jan. 2024.

Geoffrey D. Kahn, Holly C. Wilcox & Elizabeth A. Stuart (2024) Identifying Causal Risk

Factors for Self-Harm Among Adolescents With U.S. Child Protective Services Contact,

Archives of Suicide Research, 28:1, 173-183, DOI: 10.1080/13811118.2022.2150104

Hirsch, Bomi Kim, et al. "Physically Hazardous Housing and Risk for Child Protective Services

Involvement." Child welfare 94.1 (2015): 87-104. ProQuest. Web. 30 Jan. 2024.
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