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Blanca Ramirez

Professor Briones

English 1302-228

22 February 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 has been reported and start an investigation to immediately remove the child

to safety. Although CPS is the known agency to call when you sense misconduct, they don’t

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 couldn’t 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, Gelles, and

White 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, Gelles and White 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, and Gershoff 1334).

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

whether physically or emotionally. 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 investigated by CPS than those

who were non-CPS-involved families (Hirsch, Yang, Font, and Slack 96). Therefore, low-income

mothers have begun to fear their encounter with CPS. This major factor raises concerns for poor
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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 their 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 of the system which is between the ages of 18 and 21. Children who are

teenagers in the system 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 youth who run away, youths in a group care

setting, youths who endured physical abuse, youths in delinquent behavior, and youths who

didn't have a strong connection with biological parents. These factors were confirmed by

Dworsky and colleagues in 2013 (Farmer, Heyman, Kelly, and Leaman 5). With, suicide is the

second leading cause of death in adolescents between the ages of 10 and 24. Authors Kahn,
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Wilcox, and Stuart investigate the possible risk factors. They first studied adolescents in the CPS

system who had been previously investigated for abuse. Many children in the system often

follow in self-harm because they feel worthless since their parents couldn’t 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 weakness. Foster care

makes children feel lonely and disappointed that they weren’t good enough for their families

resulting in self-harm. However, 42% in 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, Stuart 179).

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

children are being saved from maltreatment. However, the agency could do a better job at taking

in every CPS-reported case instead of only the ones that are deemed appropriate. 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 by not doing enough. 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. There are other ways, better

ways to help these children, the world just needs to come together to save innocent lives.
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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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