Rare I find myself in agreement with MattS, and perhaps it is media sensationalism lodged in my memory, but my gut leans as his does re: deaths w/o CPS removal vs deaths after CPS removal.

” but at the same time we have had quite a few cases in which children should have been removed from abusive situations, were not, and died as a result.”

The US has a not insignificant number of cases where children have died as a result of abuse suffered in foster homes.

It would be interesting if we could get aggregate statistics for the number of children who die in foster care vs the number of cases where children are killed by their biological parents after CPS got involved but didn’t remove the kids from the home.

Personally, my gut feel is that the former (children who die in foster care) would be larger than the latter.

A simple parental licensing scheme would be better. In order to procreate, two parents must be over 18, legally married, and have at least one source of income that is not welfare. They must both appear before a bureaucrat whose job it is to ensure this, and upon assurance, they will be issued a joint PARENT CERTIFICATE. Children born outside this common-sense scheme are, ex utero, charges of the child agency.

I can’t disagree enough Richard.

A “tip” that results in a so called “professional” coming to your home and demanding to see your kids is more than a “tip.” That same professional contacting your children’s teachers and administration at their school is more than a “tip.”

The “tip” results in parents who made decisions having to justify those decisions to someone sitting in their living room and facing them taking the kids away because their judgement disagrees with that of the parents.

The actual process is a penalty no matter what the outcome.

That is no more than a “tip” than a robber with a gun taking your money and it being called a “charitable donation.”

Before professional social workers, we had neighborhood busy bodies. At least while they were a pain if they interfered and tried to tell you what to do, they knew you somewhat or well, and had no power, other than persuasion. They probably did as much social work than the pros.

. The idea that someone can report child abuse as anonymous doesn’t seem right. It seems you should know who your accuser is. I knew a lady (wealthy) that didn’t like her daughter in law (working class) and reported her to CPS, and MIL was pretty proud of herself just to have the young woman harassed. This was a decade or so ago. I don’t know if they changed the reporting rules.

Forget about them keeping coming around, there are plenty of examples out there where lack of proof hasn’t stopped them from taking the kid out of the home.