There is a growing abolition / “dismantle CPS” movement in the U.S., but so far it is more rhetorical and advocacy‑driven than implemented in statute, and no state has fully “deregulated” or abolished CPS.
Advocates, scholars, and campaigns such as Dorothy Roberts’ abolition work, Operation Stop CPS, and related networks call for ending the current family‑policing model, sharply curbing investigations, and replacing CPS with community‑based supports.
Policy ideas in this space often include eliminating or severely restricting mandatory and anonymous reporting, narrowing legal definitions of neglect (including removing parental substance use as a basis), and redirecting funds from foster care to cash or concrete supports for families.
In New York, a state advisory report to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights recommends a “new paradigm” that deemphasizes reporting, investigating, surveillance, and family separation, and urges governments to stop conflating poverty and parental substance use with maltreatment.
New York City policy already bars CPS investigations based solely on parental drug use, (read this about that) and Massachusetts General Brigham has stopped reporting babies exposed to drugs at birth as automatic CPS cases, signaling a shift in how neglect and risk are framed.
While the Safe Passage Investigative report on children killed by parents while in CPS does not give a single, simple count labeled “children under 3 who died because of drug‑using parents,” but it does provide two key pieces of data that constrain the answer:
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Age: 78.4% of the 88 children who died from maltreatment in Minnesota between 2014–2022 were under age 4, with 42% under 1 year and 36.4% between 1–3 years.
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Substance use: In 65.9% of cases (58 of 88), one or more parents/perpetrators had a history of substance abuse; among mothers who were the primary perpetrator, 79.2% had documented substance use histories, and among fathers, 61.9% did.
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The Safe Passage Investigation is rare in its deep dive into what kills children in CPS. It is clear from the report that children in Child Protective Services are dying in significant numbers today with neglect and significant regulations in place. To expect fewer children to suffer and die by removing these safeguards is a hard argument to make.
National reviews of child‑welfare legislation show substantial activity across many states to reform CPS—narrowing neglect definitions, reducing anonymous reporting, and strengthening due‑process protections—but not yet wholesale deregulation or abolition.
Changes so far tend to tighten what can be “screened in” as neglect (especially where poverty is the primary issue) and adjust reporting rules (for example, making some neglect reports permissive rather than mandatory), rather than removing CPS authority altogether. To not include the
The key story is that while abolitionist and radical‑reform agendas are very vocal, most concrete policy movement is toward targeted narrowing of CPS entry criteria and better differentiation of poverty from neglect, not full CPS rollback.
Nebraska’s attempt to “reform” its child welfare system through large‑scale privatization is a cautionary example of de‑facto deregulation failing children. The statewide shift to private “lead agencies” beginning in 2009 was sold as a way to increase efficiency and accountability and control costs, but within two years one contractor went bankrupt, others walked away, and the state had to pour in emergency funds as services destabilized.
Financially, Nebraska’s privatization increased costs: child‑welfare spending jumped about 27 percent (from roughly 108 million dollars in 2009 to 137 million dollars in 2011), and private agencies reportedly had to inject more than 21 million dollars of their own money just to keep contracts afloat, all while the state overspent its child‑welfare budget by about 50 million dollars over a two‑year period.
Audits and evaluations found serious problems in service quality and oversight during Nebraska’s privatization effort—heavy caseloads, inadequate training, reduced availability and quality of services for children and families, and poor documentation of how public dollars were being spent—leading legislators and advocates to declare the experiment a failure and to return core responsibility to the state by 2012.
More broadly, multi‑state research on foster‑care privatization (including Kansas and Florida as well as Nebraska) has found that youth served in privatized systems tend to stay longer in care and are somewhat less likely to have a positive exit (reunification, adoption, or permanent relative placement), raising concerns that “market‑style” reforms can worsen permanency outcomes rather than improve them.
Florida moved earlier to privatize much of its child‑welfare system through “community‑based care,” contracting regional lead agencies to run foster care and group care;(powerful Frontline quality video) evaluations found a mixed record: some gains in foster‑home capacity and timely exits from care, but persistent high rates of re‑abuse, re‑entries into care, and frequent placement moves for children, especially in group and residential settings.
Federal Child and Family Services Reviews of Florida continue to document concerns about comprehensive assessment, timely services (including for substance use, domestic violence, and housing), and the quality of casework in both foster care and in‑home cases, indicating that privatization of group homes and wider community‑based care did not by itself resolve core safety and stability issues for children.
Several states and federal policymakers are actively reconsidering how “neglect” is defined, with a growing push to stop treating poverty‑related conditions as an automatic trigger for CPS investigations.
Federal and national context
- A Bipartisan Policy Center review found that in 2022–2023, legislators in 24 states introduced 41 bills dealing with neglect definitions and related CPS “front door” decisions, often to better distinguish poverty from neglect. https://bipartisanpolicy.org/issue-brief/defining-and-reporting-child-neglect-recent-state-legislative-activity/
- National advocates and researchers argue that overly broad neglect definitions create an “overwide front door” to CPS, leading to unnecessary investigations and removals when families primarily need economic support. https://www.casey.org/state-definitions-child-neglect-casey-family-programs/
States explicitly rethinking neglect as an entry point
These examples show the conversation you asked about—moving away from using broad “neglect” as a routine entry metric for CPS:
- Maine
- Lawmakers debated bills to tighten what counts as neglect, clarifying that deprivation of necessities must be “willful” and that threats must be “direct and identifiable,” while also pushing DHHS to exhaust supportive services before removal
- The effort was explicitly framed as reducing unnecessary removals and preventing CPS from intervening primarily because of poverty‑driven conditions.
- California
- AB 1799 (2024) would change mandated‑reporter law so that general neglect reports are permitted but not required, implementing a recommendation to stop automatically feeding lower‑level neglect into CPS. https://spsf.senate.ca.gov/system/files/2024-06/ab-1799-analysis.pdf
- Supporters present this as a first step to reducing CPS involvement where families are struggling with poverty or non‑dangerous care issues rather than clear abuse. https://bipartisanpolicy.org/issue-brief/defining-and-reporting-child-neglect-recent-state-legislative-activity/
- Multiple states adjusting definitions
- A Casey Family Programs 50‑state review notes that states are revising abuse and neglect statutes and adding exclusionary criteria to narrow what can be “screened in” for CPS, in part because broad neglect definitions have led to “unnecessary CPS interventions.” https://www.casey.org/state-definitions-child-neglect-casey-family-programs/
- Legislative activity cataloged by the Bipartisan Policy Center shows a bipartisan appetite to clarify that poverty alone should not equal neglect and to recalibrate when CPS must investigate. https://bipartisanpolicy.org/issue-brief/defining-and-reporting-child-neglect-recent-state-legislative-activity/
Related federal push
- In Congress, the proposed Preventing Child Welfare Entry Caused by Poverty Act aims to let states use federal child‑welfare dollars for concrete supports (housing, transportation, food) to keep families out of CPS when the primary issue is poverty, reinforcing the shift away from treating neglect‑coded poverty as an automatic CPS entry point. https://imprintnews.org/top-stories/bipartisan-effort-in-congress-aims-to-steer-impoverished-families-away-from-foster-care-systems/250332
In short, Maine, California, and at least two dozen other states are in active conversation—through bills, task forces, and statutory reviews—about narrowing “neglect” so CPS isn’t triggered solely by poverty or low‑level concerns, and federal legislation is being designed to support that reorientation.
At the federal level, the proposed Preventing Child Welfare Entry Caused by Poverty Act aims to let states use federal child‑welfare dollars for concrete supports (housing, transportation, food) to keep families out of CPS when the primary issue is poverty, reinforcing the shift away from treating neglect‑coded poverty as an automatic CPS entry point (Bipartisan effort to steer impoverished families from CPS – https://imprintnews.org/top-stories/bipartisan-effort-in-congress-aims-to-steer-impoverished-families-away-from-foster-care-syst/245885).
RECENT LEGISLATIVE ACTIVITY
Analysis of state definitions of child neglect – https://www.casey.org/state-definitions-child-neglect-casey-family-programs/;
Child Welfare Systems’ Challenges: Differentiating Between Poverty and Neglect – https://bipartisanpolicy.org/article/child-welfare-systems-challenges-differentiating-between-poverty-and-neglect/).
A Bipartisan Policy Center review found that in 2022–2023, legislators in 24 states introduced 41 bills dealing with neglect definitions and related CPS “front door” decisions, often to better distinguish poverty from neglect (https://bipartisanpolicy.org/article/child-welfare-systems-challenges-differentiating-between-poverty-and-neglect/).
National advocates and researchers argue that overly broad neglect definitions create an “overwide front door” to CPS, leading to unnecessary investigations and removals when families primarily need economic support (https://www.casey.org/state-definitions-child-neglect-casey-family-programs/).
In Maine, lawmakers have debated bills to tighten what counts as neglect, clarifying that deprivation of necessities must be “willful” and that threats must be “direct and identifiable,” while also pushing DHHS to exhaust supportive services before removal (Maine lawmakers grapple with what constitutes child neglect – https://themainemonitor.org/lawmakers-what-constitutes-child-neglect/).
The effort is explicitly framed as reducing unnecessary removals and preventing CPS from intervening primarily because of poverty‑driven conditions (https://themainemonitor.org/lawmakers-what-constitutes-child-neglect/).
In California, AB 1799 (2024) would change mandated‑reporter law so that general neglect reports are permitted but not required, implementing a recommendation to stop automatically feeding lower‑level neglect into CPS
(Bill analysis – https://spsf.senate.ca.gov/system/files/2024-06/ab-1799-analysis.pdf). Supporters present this as a first step to reducing CPS involvement where families are struggling with poverty or non‑dangerous care issues rather than clear abuse (https://spsf.senate.ca.gov/system/files/2024-06/ab-1799-analysis.pdf).
A Casey Family Programs 50‑state review notes that states are revising abuse and neglect statutes and adding exclusionary criteria to narrow what can be “screened in” for CPS, in part because broad neglect definitions have led to unnecessary CPS interventions (https://www.casey.org/state-definitions-child-neglect-casey-family-programs/).
Legislative activity cataloged by the Bipartisan Policy Center shows a bipartisan appetite to clarify that poverty alone should not equal neglect and to recalibrate when CPS must investigate (https://bipartisanpolicy.org/issue-brief/defining-and-reporting-child-neglect-recent-state-legislative-activity/; https://bipartisanpolicy.org/article/child-welfare-systems-challenges-differentiating-between-poverty-and-neglect/).
At the federal level, the proposed Preventing Child Welfare Entry Caused by Poverty Act aims to let states use federal child‑welfare dollars for concrete supports (housing, transportation, food) to keep families out of CPS when the primary issue is poverty, reinforcing the shift away from treating neglect‑coded poverty as an automatic CPS entry point (Bipartisan effort to steer impoverished families from CPS – https://imprintnews.org/top-stories/bipartisan-effort-in-congress-aims-to-steer-impoverished-families-away-from-foster-care-syst/245885).
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