Recent California cases show children dying in foster homes, day care, and families long known to CPS, exposing egregious child protection failures. This post highlights specific deaths, audits, and multimillion dollar settlements that prove these are systemic problems, not isolated tragedies.
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Thank you for reading and sharing the KARA blog. Your attention to child welfare issues helps bring visibility to children who are too often unseen and unheard. Every post you read, share, or discuss strengthens this movement for safer, healthier lives for abused and neglected kids. We’re grateful to have you in the KARA community.
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the harsh realities facing foster youth aging out of the system and the failures of Extended Foster Care (EFC) programs
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Listen to KARA’s child welfare podcast on child death and public non-disclosure. Learn how secrecy laws and closed child protection records hide patterns of failure when children die—and what real transparency and accountability should look like.
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Listen to the powerful Invisible Children audio book and hear firsthand how our institutions fail abused and neglected children and learn what we can do to change the system. Hear the heartbreaking stories from CASA and guardian ad litem volunteers about children moved through multiple foster homes, children jailed instead of treated for trauma, and…
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free and discounted resources for foster and adopted children and families
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Isabella was taken into foster care when her birth home was raided by authorities for possession of drugs. She was found locked in a room by herself. She was silent – never spoke. Isabella had never been outside until she was placed into foster care at 7.
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Hundreds of children in Minnesota’s child protection system are waiting for a guardian ad litem – the only independent voice they have in court. Every extra month in foster care deepens trauma and drives up costs. This article explains how many children have no GAL, what it costs in dollars and human suffering, and why restoring and expanding CASA/GAL programs is both a moral and fiscal imperative.
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In 2014, Safe Passage for Minnesota Children reported that Pope County would face no legal penalty for its role in the slow tortured death of 4-year-old Eric Dean at the hands of his stepmother Amanda Peltier. Brandon Stahl presented Star Tribune readers with the sad fact that four Minnesota counties screen out 90% of child abuse calls. Read more for a review of child abuse death since Eric Dean.
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…the economic impact of untreated child abuse. The mental health issues and behavior problems of high ACEs children drive much of the violence, desperation, and dysfunction afflicting so many American citizens
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Child abuse crosses every community in America. This page gathers the strongest national statistics on maltreatment, CPS investigations, fatalities, and lifetime impacts on children’s brains and futures — along with links to leading data sources and resources for prevention, advocacy, and reform.
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Blaming severely disturbed people for their crimes is nonsense and solves nothing (it’s counter productive-no steps are taken to solve the problem if that’s all we do).
It would be much more useful to get to know a family that has tried to find help for a very troubled child. As a volunteer County guardian ad-Litem, I came to know many very troubled youth and their parents and other caregivers.
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Can a working relationship survive a fundamental disagreement about child safety? On our CASA board, a Black single mother and a white older man wrestle with whether CPS protects children or destroys families. This post explores that conflict and what it tells us about fixing a child protection system that is both racist and, at times, fatally timid.
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School boards wield profound power over the safety, healing, and long-term success of children. What they choose to fund, prioritize, debate, and champion can dramatically shape school culture and community expectations around trauma, mental health, equity, and student outcomes. Yet too often, boards are
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Funding cuts to programs for education, healthcare, poverty, hunger, disabilities, insurance, civil rights, nutrition, homelessness, discrimination, early childhood programs, child labor, and child abuse are all disappearing.
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MAAFPA’s stated goals emphasize preventing unnecessary removals and preserving African American and other disproportionately represented families, while the Safe Passage data show rising deaths—largely from neglect, substance use, and domestic violence—often in cases where CPS already knew the family.
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This is the longest and most powerful and articulate suicide note I’ve ever read and it has great meaning to me for its power to relate these two incomprehensible sorrows (abuse & suicide).
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A Minneapolis teacher describes a 17 year old who carries his U.S. passport everywhere after ICE raids—showing how immigration enforcement terrorizes children, families, and classrooms.
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Listen to KARA’s child welfare podcast on child death and public non-disclosure. Learn how secrecy laws and closed child protection records hide patterns of failure when children die—and what real transparency and accountability should look like.
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Minnesota’s African American Family Preservation Act aims to reduce racial disproportionality in child welfare. But underfunded “family preservation first” policies can leave abused children in dangerous homes or unsafe kinship foster care, with deadly consequences documented in Safe Passage fatality reports.
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It is an open secret that child labour is rampant throughout the supply chains of major chocolate brands like Nestle, Mars and Ferrero. Despite international guidelines and targets to eradicate child labour, a lack of political will and lack of strict corporate legal responsibility enables the continued use of child labour.
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Legally, there were no protections for children in the home or orphanage at the time (nor do they have legal status today). What became of orphan train children varied from finding loving homes to sex abuse and slave labor. Over an estimated 150,000–250,000 children rode these trains making this the largest child migration in U.S. history.
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Imagine being a child watching armed officers dragging children and teachers from your school and the chaos of citizen protesters risking violence to stop it. These attacks are destroying the fabric of your community and will make your next days, weeks, and months of classroom learning full of fear that it will happen again.
Targeting children in or around schools to enforce immigration laws is a profoundly traumatizing attack on children and ethical failure of a society’s duty protect minors.
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Parents unable to buy food for their child because of poverty are different from caregivers leaving their babies without food or care by absence, or because they are incapacitated by substance abuse or are the kind of parents who spend all their food money on drugs.
This parental distinction is also true for caregivers unable to bring their babies and toddlers in for medical appointments or court appearances. The difference between parents that would if they could and those that simply are too dysfunctional because of severe mental health or substance abuse issues are stark.
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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.
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What is it like to do social work, child protection, or nonprofit work with at‑risk children and families in this climate? How do you avoid being worn down by the steady drip of misinformation, negative media, and viral “anti‑CPS” narratives that are hitting workers and agencies hard?
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Current federal and state conversations about CPS are moving in two, conflicting, directions: a push by advocates to sharply limit “family policing,” reduce mandatory reporting, and narrow or remove “neglect” in law, and an opposing concern from child protection and public health experts that weakening these protections without robust alternative supports will increase lifechanging child abuse and trauma for millions of America’s most vulnerable children.
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Thank You Star Tribune reporter Brandon Stahl
Thank You Pioneer Press reporter Ruben Rosario
Thank You former MN Supreme Court Justice Kathleen Blatz for joining the task force and your years of speaking out about the serious failures within our child protection system.
Thank You Governor Mark Dayton for using the long overdue “colossal failure” language to describe an overburdened, misunderstood, and under-supported child protection system and creating the investigative task force to make it work better for children.
From the fifty children in my CASA guardian ad-Litem caseload, Thank You.
You have given voice to the tragic failure of child protection that allows four year olds to die tortured deaths after 10, 20, 30 reports of child abuse to state agencies.
Without you, these children have no voice;
Not in the homes they are raised in,
Not in the courts that investigate their families,
Not in the media or the state legislature.
These children are silent and invisible without you.
We the public find child abuse uncomfortable and refuse to pay attention until a baby is found in a dumpster and then we wring our collective hands about ‘those awful people’ and work to punish a social worker and send the parental offender to prison.
That the parent was a fourth generation abused preteen mother with serious mental health issues has little significance to us. Justice must be served.
None of the fifty children I lobbied to remove from their toxic homes ever made the newspaper.
Not the baby with the bottom half of her body burned off, the boy who was tied to a bed, beaten, starved, and sexually abused for four years, or the more than ten other very young children who were also sexually abused – 2,3, 4, and 7 and 9.
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Trump’s recent Presidential Order appears in its entirety below in the Read More section of this post. Added to the order today, is conflicted and confusing language that will have a terrible impact on the quality of life for millions of America’s abused and neglected children, families, and the communities they live in.
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Invisible children in global armed conflicts face flagrant violations of their right to life, safety and protection. Violence is inflicted directly on children and/or children face emotional and mental trauma from being ripped apart from their families, homes and chance at a prosperous future. Despite awareness of this, there is a lack of political will to take action. The following news articles details the how the world is failing to protect children in times of armed global conflicts and steps taken by some to remedy the situation.
World – “World is failing to protect children from the horrors of war”.
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This study of 251 neglected children and 502 community matched control group over a 17 year period found that 32% of child abuse fatalities occurring in the same year were attributed to child neglect alone. Most of these children were unnoticed by teachers, law enforcement, healthcare workers and others and received no child protection or welfare services.
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The United States ranks near the bottom of wealthy countries for child well-being, with higher child poverty, infant mortality, and firearm deaths than its peers. Learn what the data shows and why it matters.
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This from Idaho today. The tip the iceberg reported on by Safe Passage for Children of Minnesota recently. Add to this the Federal Government’s “Bonfire of Deregulation” millions of abused and neglected children will be underserved and many more of them die of trauma and abuse in 2026.
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The WHO has highlighted alarming statistics. Millions of children suffer from preventable and treatable diseases, even though affordable treatment exists. Children’s right to health is recognized in several United Nations and international agreements. The growing economic power of multinational enterprises (MNEs) and pharmaceutical giants raises new questions. Many ask whether these private, non‑state entities have an obligation to ensure children’s right to health.
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In 2025, the federal government declared a bonfire of deregulation in Child Protective Services (CPS) for 2026. This is part of a broader “parental rights” and religious liberty agenda. MAGA voices,
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Contrary to a common assumption, neglect is not less damaging than abuse. Research shows neglect victims have lifelong problems because they miss developmental milestones around language, self-control, and bonding with others.
A constant dilemma in neglect cases is whether to traumatize children by removing them from their families, or leave them in situations where their brains aren’t developing normally.
Quality Early Childhood Education (ECE) programs can make it possible to leave children at home while helping their parents improve parenting skills.
This study documents that neglect victims who got ECE moved quickly from having a language deficit to the normal range. Language development is critical to academic success and positive interpersonal relationships.
ECE can help many children avoid foster care and still obtain the baseline skills they need to thrive.
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American Fosters are struggling. These reports from around the nation indicate a great need for more help for at risk families and safe homes for children unlucky enough to be born into toxic homes.
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Abused and neglected children don’t have a voice in the politics and policies that rule their lives. They are at the mercy of our politicians and institutions that serve them.
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Because CASA and Children’s Advocacy Centers remain largely unknown, at‑risk children and families lose critical lifelines they don’t even realize exist. Low public awareness means fewer mandated reporters, neighbors, teachers, and relatives can to turn when they suspect abuse—or how to push for a CASA volunteer or a CAC referral when a child enters the system. It depresses volunteer recruitment for CASA and philanthropic support for both models, limiting how many children can be served. It also allows policymakers to underfund these services…
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“Why Do You Give?” is an invitation to turn concern into action for abused and neglected children. For 30 years, KARA and our volunteers have been researching, reporting, and speaking out about the most critical child protection issues of the day, giving voice to children who cannot speak for themselves.
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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…
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National and federal data show that child neglect is the primary allegation in a clear majority of CPS cases, so removing neglect from CPS as an entry criterion would likely eliminate investigation for roughly 60–75% of the children who are currently investigated or substantiated, with some variation by state. About 7.8 million children / year are reported abused and neglected to CPS. Because child abuse is invisible, it is likely that at least that many children remain unseen and unreported. The Trump child welfare executive order leans heavily into language about “unnecessary removals” and “overreach”
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There is an underappreciated reality that Child Protective Services is the only safe haven for children living with rape, violence and neglect as they are too young to defend themselves.
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While Trump’s child welfare orders do not delete “neglect” from law, they lean heavily into language about “unnecessary removals” and “overreach” that can be weaponized by parental rights, MAGA, and some religious groups to argue that neglect rarely justifies CPS involvement.
How the order’s framing minimizes neglect
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Richard Wexler’s Child Neglect in America article uses a Swedish child neglect study to make sweeping claims about “American child neglect and poverty,” even though childhood conditions in the two countries are radically different. In the Nordic welfare states, far fewer children live in deep poverty and families receive broad supports like child benefits, paid leave, subsidized childcare, and universal health care, while U.S. child poverty is roughly twice as high and basic needs often go unmet without thin, means‑tested programs
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I have sat in emergency rooms at 2 a.m. holding the hand of a child who flinched at every sudden sound, because of the things done to her at home. I have watched little ones arrive at foster homes with all their belongings in a trash bag, eyes wide and silent, trying to be “good” so no one will send them away again. I have seen teenagers scream, swear, and hit people, when what they really were was traumatized, terrified, and broken.
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Below are KARA’s researched useful videos and podcasts on
child abuse and neglect mental health
ACEs, trauma, healing, and skill‑building cluster into a few groups: big‑picture science, practical trauma‑informed care, and survivor‑oriented healing content.
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Mental Health RESOURCE BOX listing in your favorites for PTSD Coach, PTSD Family Coach, and 988/Crisis Text Line as always‑available supports for abused and neglected children, youth, and adults.
Crisis lines (U.S.)
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Enhancing Child Protection Awareness on Wikipedia: A Research-Based Approach to Expanding and Improving Information on Child Abuse, Policy and Protective Services Cavendish University Uganda
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Children and youth in foster care often have needs that are not available to be filled by the County or their caregivers. Christmas and the holiday season can be hard on families with limited resources. If you know of a foster child or foster family who would benefit from the resources on this page, send this link to them and share this page widely.
Do you have examples of resources not shown here? Send them to info@invisiblechildren.org with FOSTER RESOURCES in the subject line
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