Jamie and Alex delve into the harrowing issue of children dying within the Child Protective Services (CPS) system. They discuss a groundbreaking report revealing that 200 children have died while within the CPS system,
Fear and Firing of Mandated Reporters (KARA podcast)…professionals being punished, losing their jobs, and facing lawsuits for fulfilling their duties
Josh and Maya share a powerful story of a young boy on the brink of being locked up, not because he was dangerous, but because the system lacked transparency
Child abuse in the home is still too often treated as a private family issue instead of a crime. Drawing on years as a CASA guardian ad Litem, this post exposes how Child Protective Services keeps abuse hidden, why children have no standing in court, and what must change so kids are truly safe in their own homes.
Sexual abuse of a child is rarely a single “incident” or the act of a stranger in the dark; for many children, it is years of rape by the caregivers who are supposed to protect them. Most child sex abuse occurs in the home. This CASA Guardian ad Litem has experience two four-year-olds coming into…
Child abuse in the United States is not rare or random — it is the predictable outcome of policy choices. In 2023, about 546,000 children were confirmed victims of abuse or neglect and an estimated 2,000 were killed, roughly five children every day. Most are hurt by their own parents, often after prior contact with Child Protective Services. These numbers vary wildly by state, proving that our systems can choose to protect children — or not.
Emma and Daniel highlight the systemic issues of foster care in America, focusing on how foster youth struggle due to funding misallocation and harmful policies
Minnesota’s child protection system is repeatedly returning severely abused children to unsafe homes — and some are dying as a result. Drawing on the Star Tribune’s “In Harm’s Way” investigation, Safe Passage’s child fatality data, and my experience as a CASA guardian ad litem, this post exposes how opaque CPS practices, ignored warning signs, and a lack of accountability keep kids in danger. Learn what’s going wrong, why it matters for every Minnesotan, and how you can help push lawmakers to finally put children’s safety first.
systemic issues within Child Protective Services (CPS) that have led to the tragic deaths of children, even after CPS involvement
Kids at Risk Action, the hosts address the growing mental health crisis in child welfare, particularly in emergency rooms and foster care systems. They reveal alarming statistics, such as the significant rise in ER visits for children’s mental health crises and the systemic failures that leave many without proper care.
Official child welfare numbers may capture only part of the crisis. This analysis explains how poverty, Family Assessment practices, underreporting, misreporting, and weak transparency can hide the true scale of harm to children—and why future projections must account for what the system fails to record.
Childhood trauma, suicide and self-harm among American youth are at historic highs, with alarming increases among fosters, preteens, girls, LGBTQ+ youth, and children of color. Suicide is now the second leading cause of death for ages 10–24, and nearly one in five high school students has seriously considered suicide in the past year. Rates of self-harm, especially among young girls and LGBTQ+ youth, have surged, with emergency room visits for self-injury rising dramatically since 2020
TRAUMA INFORMED TEACHING, TRAUMA INFORMED CLASSROOMS Teachers as Mandated Reporters and Frontline Defenders – Teachers are uniquely positioned—they often spend more awake hours with children than any other adult, especially for those from troubled homes. They are confidants, first responders, and witnesses to the silent suffering of abused, neglected, or traumatized students.
Very young children are showing up in emergency rooms after suicide attempts and self‑harm, often with histories of abuse, neglect, and other trauma. When CPS and lawmakers lack transparent, child‑outcome data and trauma‑focused resources, these children slip through the cracks until it is too late.
Social workers face secondary trauma and burnout in a child protection system that hides basic child outcome data. When CPS agencies use HIPAA as a “red herring” to block even de identified information, lawmakers and communities can’t fix what’s broken—and children and workers continue to suffer in the dark.
This article from 2013 is still true today with no signs of changing. It needs to be shared with your states lawmakers: The United States is the only nation that has not signed the United Nation’s International Rights Of the Child Treaty of the 1980’s. A primary reason we refuse to sign the treaty is…
There is no shortage of well-meaning volunteers and workers dedicated to improving the lives of the children they are serving as teachers, Guardians ad Litem, social & healthcare workers, law enforcement and adoptive/foster parents.
Child abuse redefines the way a child thinks and sees the world. Abused children have severely limited learning and coping skills. An abused child’s mental development has been arrested by an anxiety and fear that supercede the learning of other personal and social skills. Without personal and social skills, and a lessening of the anxieties and fears, Abused children fail at school, don’t make friends, and keep a terribly low self image.
This post addresses the healthcare burden children with high ACEs scores have on our communities and nation. What’s not obvious to many is that at risk children become at risk youth and at risk adults. 9-year 80% prison recidivism has been with us for over 20 years. This single statistic shines a light on the cascading and forever financial and social costs to our communities from one other American institution that is easily understood. The health care financial and social costs are more complex and harder to understand. The Cape Breton University study below brings clarity to this complex issue.
This deep dive expands on KARA’s child welfare crisis post by walking through five Northeastern University capstone projects. Together, they use national data, infant mortality models, county level forecasting, and poverty analysis to show where children are most at risk—and how KARA AND YOU can use this research to drive policy change.
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.
The Safe Passage Report on Child Maltreatment Deaths is a remarkable report – not in a good way. It demonstrates how common it is for Minnesota children to die from abuse in the home even after they have become known to CPS. This report is still only the the tip of the horrors facing abused children as;
DHS did not cooperate with the investigator,
Four counties did not respond,
Child deaths reported were only those that had court filings or had been reported in the media
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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Colorado claims a 40 percent drop in child abuse and neglect, but state data tell a different story. Hotline reports are up, while fewer cases are screened in, more are diverted to Family Assessment Response (FAR), instead of investigating the child. This looks less like safer children and more like a system that changed how it counts—and hides—childhood trauma and its victims.
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are not just difficult memories—they’re powerful risk factors that shape how a child’s brain and body develop across a lifetime. In this Kids at Risk Action podcast, hosts Alex and Jordan explore how abuse, neglect, domestic violence, and other ACEs can lead to PTSD like symptoms, chronic stress, and higher risks of mental illness, addiction, and early death. They connect these experiences to systemic gaps in child welfare, schools, and health care, where children too often receive help only after they are in crisis instead of when early warning signs appear. The episode calls for trauma informed care, ACEs screening, and policy changes that fund prevention and resilience building, urging listeners to advocate for better support and a more compassionate, proactive approach to child welfare.
Most of what we know about foster care comes from very thin data: how many children are in care, how many enter or exit each year. That’s not enough to guide policy or spending. This post explains which foster care outcomes Minnesota and other states still don’t track—years stuck in care, abuse in placement, endless moves, school disruption, medication without therapy, and what happens after youth age out—and why demanding honest, de‑identified data is one of the most powerful things you can do for abused and neglected children in your community.
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).
Eli Hentges. This is one of the 88 stories of children dying at the hands of their caregivers reported in the recent Safe Passage For Children investigation of child death in Minnesota. The report suggests why this tragedy is happening in our state and how we can make life safer for at risk children (in the read more at the end of the article). Please share this with your contacts and State Representative.
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.
“As child protection rules are rolled back, a new kind of child neglect threatens millions of at‑risk children. Read what these changes mean and how to respond.”
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.
Join the Discussion on Facebook
Make a difference for the children of Minnesota today,
Donate Here!
When lawmakers finally see the human and financial numbers behind child abuse and neglect, our politics can treat it as the national emergency it is—not a niche social‑services problem. Over a lifetime, the “domino effect” of abused and neglected children touches every system we claim to care about: schools, crime, taxes, public health, and public safety
Babies and toddlers face the highest abuse risk, yet up to 60% of maltreatment deaths never appear on death certificates. Here’s what the data really shows.
April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month, and in 2026 we’re facing a time of rising risk for children. Economic stress, untreated mental health needs, online exploitation, and overburdened child protection systems are all pushing more families to the edge, while the nonprofits and advocates children rely on are stretched thin. This April, “awareness” isn’t enough. We need honest data about how many children are being hurt, real support for families before crisis, and stronger tools for the people on the front lines—teachers, CASAs, clinicians, social workers, and neighbors—who see abuse first and are often the only ones who can stop it.
April’s National Child Abuse Prevention Month reminds us that protecting children means more than responding after harm—it means building strong families, supportive communities, and systems that recognize warning signs early, with CASA volunteers turning those prevention ideals into reality for children in court by offering consistent advocacy for safety, healing, and stable homes.
Hungry Like a Wolf, a powerful new play about sexual predators, mirrors what I saw as a CASA guardian ad litem: very young children raped in their own homes, perpetrators never held accountable, and trauma that reshapes every part of a child’s life. In the U.S., 7.8 million children are reported abused each year—many sexually abused—and countless others are never seen. Until adults are willing to talk honestly about child sexual abuse and its lifelong impact, there will be no real push to change systems or protect children.
Social workers are the connective tissue of child protection, operating where trauma, helplessness, and institutional failure most acutely converge. Equal parts advocate, therapist, investigator, and bridge-builder, their roles are both the first line of defense and an agent of systemic change.
U.S. teachers work more hours, earn less relative to similarly educated professionals, and leave the profession more often than their peers in Northern Europe, where better working conditions and higher status make teaching a more sustainable career.
Each week, children are escaping brutal homes, being harmed in foster care, and caught in CPS systems that too often miss clear danger or punish families without proof. From multimillion‑dollar settlements and court battles in Texas, Washington, New York, and Illinois to new laws and policies that could reshape how abuse and neglect are investigated, this roundup highlights the most urgent child protection stories advocates, professionals, and concerned community members need to see right now.
Therapists—whether working in schools, clinics, community settings, private practices, or as part of multidisciplinary teams—are often the first, sometimes the only, professionals capable of translating the science of trauma into lasting recovery.
Research across foster care, ACEs, and maltreatment shows that abused and systems‑involved children face dramatically higher risks of self‑harm and suicide. This post walks through key studies and calls for concrete changes in child welfare policy and practice to prevent avoidable deaths.
Child Fatality & Egregious Incident Reporting: A U.S. Overview America’s approach to exposing and understanding the gravest harms done to children—fatalities, near-deaths, torture, and catastrophic agency failures—reveals a nation deeply divided by geography, law, and political will. The result is a patchwork of minimal transparency. Some states shine a light on information that has been…
Big tobacco talks about a “smoke‑free future,” but its marketing tells a different story. This post gathers key videos and articles that show how major tobacco companies push vapes, nicotine pouches and heated tobacco to children and youth while claiming to care about health.
Policies that keep children in homes with life‑threatening harm on the grounds of unproven or unscientific beliefs—account for avoidable homicidal deaths of hundreds of MN children and many more tortured and near-death experiences annually. When Child Protection becomes more transparent when studies like the one linked above become common, this reality will be recognized in all…
School counselors are the vital bridge between struggling children and the support systems they desperately need. Positioned at the intersection of school, family, and community, they are often the first line of defense—sometimes the only one—against the silent epidemic of child trauma and abuse
Child abuse doesn’t stop for holidays or election years. In just the first 45 days of 2026, sad stories and new statistics are already piling up. This post tracks those cases and numbers to show how many invisible children still need our protection.
Childhood abuse leaves epigenetic “scars” that behave like quantum events in a child’s developing brain—shifting the whole trajectory of a life and even echoing across generations. This post links trauma, ACEs, and America’s worst health, violence, and inequality statistics.
Children in Texas are dying in homes, foster care, hotels, and treatment centers that CPS already knew were dangerous. This post highlights recent child deaths, official DFPS fatality data, and the federal lawsuit that says Texas still cannot keep kids safe
Why Florida Child Abuse Reporting Matters: Florida’s child abuse and neglect is just one part of KARA’s reporting mission and our nation’s child‑death problem. Florida reviews hundreds of abuse‑related child deaths each year. This is an investigative report recently completed in Minnesota that needs to happen in all states.
Over 48 years, CASA/GAL (Guardian ad Litem) programs have grown into a national network of more than 900 organizations with 80,000–100,000 guardian ad litem volunteers serving close to a quarter‑million abused and neglected children each year, according to National CASA/GAL program surveys and the association’s own history. In every state but North Dakota, these volunteers are often the only adults in the courtroom whose sole job is to stand for a child’s best interests—and they do it with intentionally tiny caseloads so each child gets more time, more attention, and more consistency than overloaded systems can usually provide