child fatality

When a community’s is focused on the well-being of its members, everyone takes the safety of children more seriously, writes Paul DiLorenzo.

The Family First and Prevention Services Act (FFPSA), which passed into law as part of the 2018 budget resolution, is one of the largest overhauls of our nation’s child welfare system in the last decade.

In mid-July, Bobby Cagle, the director of Los Angeles County’s $2.8-billion child welfare system, visited the high desert communities of Palmdale and Lancaster, both reeling from the latest child death to strike the county.

In the wake of two recent abuse-related deaths, Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) wants to deprioritize the reunification of foster youth with their birth parents, which is the commonly accepted primary goal in American child welfare systems.

Last year, the federal report Child Maltreatment 2016 found that deaths of children from abuse and neglect increased by more than 7 percent from 2015 to 2016. While this increase may be due in part to improved reporting by states, it is estimated that nearly five children are killed by abuse or neglect in the U.S.

For New York’s Administration of Children Services (ACS), retired law enforcement officers have been working in-house since 2007 to advise their roughly 1,700 caseworkers. Today, the ACS will announce that these former cops are getting a broader child welfare beat that includes assessing the risk brought on by new adults moving into households served by the agency.

“Our responsibility is to create foresight about the changing nature of risk before anything goes wrong.”  – David Woods David Woods, one of the pioneers of safety science as applied today in industries such as nuclear power, airlines and health care, offers a critical insight into what continues to be missing from risk and safety analyses in child protective services (CPS).

As we reported Thursday, the Department of Health and Human Services responded with a lukewarm reception to the recommendations of the Commission to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities (CECANF). One of CECANF’s highlighted recommendations was that HHS work with states to conduct five-year reviews of maltreatment-related fatalities, and develop plans to improve fatality prevention.

As required by law, the Department of Health and Human Services responded last week to the many proposals offered by the Commission to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities. The department set aside any proposals pointed at Congress, states or another executive branch, and focused on 64 that directly involved the work of HHS.