U.S. child welfare “bonfire of deregulation” and family‑preservation‑first strategies are unfolding in a landscape where children already have very few enforceable federal rights to safety, and where independent research shows large numbers of children dying at the hands of their caregivers.
Safe Passage findings: children dying in “known” danger
The Safe Passage for Children of Minnesota fatalities study, “Minnesota Child Fatalities from Maltreatment 2014–2022”, documents 161 children who died from abuse or neglect in one state over eight years, with nearly half killed by someone other than a biological parent and a documented subset killed in foster and kinship foster homes that were supposed to be safe placements. The same report shows that many of these children lived in families with long histories of reports, prior removals, substance abuse, and domestic violence, and that about 26% had been previously removed and then returned to unsafe homes before they were killed (again, see the Minnesota fatalities report. In other words, even under today’s “regulated” system, children are already dying in situations where agencies knew they were at serious risk but did not or could not act decisively to protect them.
Almost no federal right to safety
These patterns play out in a country where children have almost no direct, enforceable federal right to safety or protection from abuse. The United States remains the only UN member state that has failed to ratify the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, a global treaty adopted in 1989 that defines children’s rights to survival, development, protection from violence, and a voice in decisions that affect them; UNICEF’s overview of the Convention is available at https://www.unicef.org/child-rights-convention. Because the treaty has never been ratified here (America is the only nation in the world not to ratify it), its protections are not binding federal law, and U.S. children rely instead on a patchwork of state statutes, federal funding conditions, and agency policies that can be loosened or rewritten administratively.
Deregulation and “family preservation first” in this context
In this already weak rights environment, efforts to deregulate child welfare and to raise the bar for removal in the name of family preservation and cost savings shift even more risk onto children. The Safe Passage Minnesota data show what happens when systems hesitate to remove or quickly return children to dangerous homes: children die at the hands of parents, partners, and kin caregivers in cases where the danger was well known (see the Safe Passage report: and Child Welfare Monitor’s summary.
When federal oversight is rolled back, kinship licensing is further streamlined without stronger safety checks, and political pressure rises to keep numbers in care down, children have no federal treaty‑based right they or their advocates can invoke to insist that their safety comes first.
For KARA’s purposes, the combination is critical to highlight:
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Documented fatalities, such as those in the Safe Passage study, show that current policies already fail to protect many children from lethal violence by caregivers.
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The absence of a ratified children’s rights treaty, as reflected in global comparisons of child well‑being and rights (for example, UNICEF Report Card), means there is no overarching, enforceable federal obligation to prioritize the child’s safety and best interests over political, fiscal, or ideological goals.
Any move to deregulate, to weaken protective licensing rules, or to make removal more politically costly without simultaneously creating strong, rights‑based child‑safety guarantees and independent fatality review will predictably leave more abused and neglected children in harm’s way—with very limited legal recourse when the system fails them.
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Minnesota records and investigations show that abused and neglected children are dying both in their birth homes and in foster care, including kinship foster homes that were supposed to be safer, and that these deaths are systematically documented in a handful of key public reports and lawsuits.
What Minnesota records show about child deaths
A detailed analysis by Safe Passage for Children of Minnesota, “Minnesota Child Fatalities from Maltreatment 2014–2022,” reports that 161 children died due to abuse or neglect over that period (PDF: https://safepassageforchildren.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Gehrman-R.-Karrow-M.-2023.-Minnesota-Child-Fatalities-from-Maltreatment-2014-2022.pdf). The Safe Passage report notes that nearly half of these children (about 48%) were killed by someone other than a biological parent, including mothers’ partners and kinship foster parents (same PDF: https://safepassageforchildren.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Gehrman-R.-Karrow-M.-2023.-Minnesota-Child-Fatalities-from-Maltreatment-2014-2022.pdf).
Within that total, Safe Passage identifies seven children killed in foster care, six of them in kinship foster placements, and flags this as “a concerning number of children killed in foster care, primarily kinship placements” (https://safepassageforchildren.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Gehrman-R.-Karrow-M.-2023.-Minnesota-Child-Fatalities-from-Maltreatment-2014-2022.pdf).[2]
Minnesota’s official Child Maltreatment Reports from the Department of Human Services add context by showing how many children die each year from maltreatment statewide.
The 2021 report, “Minnesota’s Child Maltreatment Report, 2021,” documents 28 child maltreatment deaths, while the 2022 report lists 31 deaths, and both note that in roughly half of fatal cases the child or family had prior child protection involvement (2021 PDF: https://www.lrl.mn.gov/docs/2023/mandated/231362.pdf; 2022 PDF: https://www.lcc.mn.gov/tfcp/meetings/2025/MN-child-maltreatment-report-2022).
The 2023 corrected statewide report continues this pattern of dozens of deaths annually in families known to the system (2023 PDF: https://www.lrl.mn.gov/docs/2025/mandated/251621.pdf).[3]
Individual lawsuits and county press releases put names and narratives to some of the foster‑care deaths. An article in The Imprint titled “Minnesota Counties Sued in Death of Child in Foster Care” describes the case of 17‑month‑old Layla Jackson, who died in 2018 in an unlicensed emergency foster home; the lawsuit alleges that Hennepin and Scott counties placed her with caregivers who were not properly screened and ignored warnings about danger in the home (https://imprintnews.org/foster-care/minnesota-counties-sued-death-child-foster-care/52993 and extended coverage at https://imprintnews.org/child-welfare-2/lawsuit-alleges-fatal-lapses-emergency-foster-care/53051).
A Minnesota firm, SiebenCarey, details another case in its blog post “Lawsuit: State Gave Child Foster Care License to Known Abuser,” involving 6‑year‑old Kendrea Johnson, whose 2014 death in a licensed foster home is tied in the complaint to poor screening and ignored safety concerns (https://www.knowyourrights.com/blog/siebencarey-files-civil-lawsuit-following-death-of/).
The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office press release “Foster mother pleads guilty in death of three-year-old” describes the death of 3‑year‑old Arianna Hunziker, who died in 2017 due to abuse and neglect in a foster placement (https://www.hennepinattorney.org/en/news/news/2019/October/dirk-10-4-2019).[6]
Foster homes vs. birth homes: where children are dying
Commentary on the Safe Passage report in Child Welfare Monitor (“The Minnesota Child Maltreatment Fatalities Report: Essential Reading for Child Advocates”) emphasizes that most child maltreatment deaths in Minnesota still occur in birth homes and that perpetrators are most often parents or their partners (https://childwelfaremonitor.org/2023/03/05/the-minnesota-child-maltreatment-fatalities-report-essential-reading-for-child-advocates/).
Safe Passage’s own data show that across the 2014–2022 fatalities, the most common perpetrators were mothers (27.3%), mothers’ partners (23.9%), and fathers (22.7%), with over 65% of cases involving caregiver substance abuse (again, see the Minnesota Child Fatalities report PDF: https://safepassageforchildren.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Gehrman-R.-Karrow-M.-2023.-Minnesota-Child-Fatalities-from-Maltreatment-2014-2022.pdf).
This pattern mirrors national NCANDS‑based research on fatal and non‑fatal child maltreatment, which finds that biological parents and their partners are responsible for the majority of child abuse deaths (for example, see the article “Fatal and non-fatal child maltreatment in the US” on ScienceDirect: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S014521341300327X and NCANDS overview at https://acf.gov/cb/data-research/ncands).[10]
What makes the Minnesota record distinctive, according to Safe Passage and Child Welfare Monitor, is how clearly it documents that some children are being killed in foster care—especially in kinship placements—after the state has already intervened (Safe Passage PDF: https://safepassageforchildren.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Gehrman-R.-Karrow-M.-2023.-Minnesota-Child-Fatalities-from-Maltreatment-2014-2022.pdf and analysis at https://childwelfaremonitor.org/2023/03/05/the-minnesota-child-maltreatment-fatalities-report-essential-reading-for-child-advocates/).
The seven foster‑care deaths between 2014 and 2022 represent a small fraction of total fatalities, but they are systemically important because these children had already been removed for safety and placed under county or state custody.
Shared system failures in both settings
Safe Passage’s Minnesota report and the Child Welfare Monitor commentary describe parallel system errors in birth homes and foster homes.
In birth homes, many children who later died had histories of multiple reports, domestic violence, substance use, or prior removals; the report estimates that 26% of children who died had been previously removed and returned to their families, sometimes against front‑line recommendations (https://safepassageforchildren.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Gehrman-R.-Karrow-M.-2023.-Minnesota-Child-Fatalities-from-Maltreatment-2014-2022.pdf and https://childwelfaremonitor.org/2023/03/05/the-minnesota-child-maltreatment-fatalities-report-essential-reading-for-child-advocates/).[2]
In foster care, particularly kinship foster care, the same sources argue that agencies often prioritized family preservation and quick placement over safety, placing children with relatives who had their own histories of violence, substance abuse, or instability and then failing to provide adequate monitoring or support (Safe Passage PDF: https://safepassageforchildren.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Gehrman-R.-Karrow-M.-2023.-Minnesota-Child-Fatalities-from-Maltreatment-2014-2022.pdf; lawsuits summarized in The Imprint at https://imprintnews.org/foster-care/minnesota-counties-sued-death-child-foster-care/52993 and https://imprintnews.org/child-welfare-2/lawsuit-alleges-fatal-lapses-emergency-foster-care/53051).
Opinion pieces like “Why a Minnesota law to limit foster care removals could hurt children” from Center of the American Experiment argue that reforms aimed at reducing removals and favoring kinship placement can increase risk if they are not paired with rigorous safety standards and oversight (https://www.americanexperiment.org/why-a-minnesota-law-to-limit-foster-care-removals-could-hurt-children/).[7]
Taken together, these records support a nuanced conclusion:
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Most maltreatment deaths in Minnesota are still caused by parents or their partners in birth homes known to child protection, showing failures to act or to sustain protective interventions.
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A smaller but critical subset of children are killed in foster care, mostly in kinship homes, highlighting failures in screening, licensing, placement decisions, and monitoring once the state has intervened (as documented by Safe Passage, The Imprint, SiebenCarey, and the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office: PDFs and articles linked above).
Minnesota’s record shows that child safety is jeopardized both when agencies leave children too long in dangerous birth homes and when they place children in unsafe foster homes, making clear that any “family preservation” or kinship‑first policy must be balanced with transparent fatality review, strong safety thresholds, and real accountability when children die.
Moving social worker interview
How bad is it podcast
The war on foster children (podcast)
A young girl denied Child Protection (podcast)
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