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.
dive into the “ground truth” of the foster care system — exposing the often-unseen hardships children face even after being placed in protective care. Through heartbreaking stories like Alex’s and alarming statistics on abuse
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 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.
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).
Stop hunting in the dark. Explore the best national child abuse data sources plus frontline resources for CASAs, foster parents, educators, and policymakers.
Modern slavery did not end with history books. The UK Modern Slavery Act was meant to protect victims and hold traffickers accountable, yet thousands of children remain exploited, re trafficked, and left without real support. This KARA post explains how the law works, where it fails child victims, and what advocates say must change—plus concrete ways you can help push systems toward real protection.
This list of Minnesota resources—and the note below—is taken directly from CASA Minnesota in recognition of National Child Abuse Prevention Month, a time to reflect on what it really means to build safe, supportive communities where every child can thrive.
Becoming Foster Responsive: Foster Facts and Resources For Families (Healing, Advocating, and Saving Young Lives)
Child welfare social workers stand where children’s trauma meets family hardship and broken systems. This trauma‑informed guide shows how social workers can find invisible kids, demand real accountability, build strong teams, use mandated reporting with courage, support caregivers, protect themselves from burnout, and turn casework into lasting system reform.
During National Volunteer Week, we’re shining a light on CASA and Guardian ad Litem volunteers in Minnesota—the trained community members who stand beside abused and neglected children in court, give them a consistent adult voice, and help judges make better decisions about safety, healing, and permanency.
Foster parenting is about much more than providing a bed. This guide shows caregivers how to insist on full trauma histories, document key events, advocate against medication‑only approaches, partner with schools and agencies, and use their lived experience to reform systems and transform children’s lives.
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.
Flint’s Rx Kids program has spent about $14 million giving pregnant and new parents roughly $6,250 per baby in flexible cash—money families use for rent, food, diapers, and medical care. By contrast, CDC linked research puts the lifetime cost of a single child maltreatment case at roughly $830,000, and a year of foster care can cost $41,000 or more per child. If cash support keeps even a small share of vulnerable families out of CPS, the investment likely pays for itself many times over—while sparing children the trauma of removal and system involvement.
Compared to other advanced nations America treats children and the people who care for them as an afterthought and then acts surprised when our schools and child‑welfare systems are overwhelmed with troubled children suffering from health and mental health issues.
This episode of the Kids at Risk Action podcast dives into the science and societal impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)—early life traumas like abuse, neglect, and household instability that dramatically shape physical and mental health outcomes. Through powerful commentary from child advocates
how media coverage of child welfare too often focuses only on tragedy — fueling blame, misunderstanding, and reduced public support for the very systems meant to protect vulnerable children.
These are the insights of a 77-year-old victim of childhood abuse. He was not aware of the root cause which dominated his life until he was 65 years-old and ran across references to resilience and child abuse. Bill is a thoughtful, deep thinker. The following observations result from his reflection on his life.
Before this report, no one knew how many children in CPS were dying or how they died. Chances are the number of children murdered at the hands of their caregivers is much larger than the 200 listed in the report.
Why do so many fosters aging out of care struggling in school, becoming homeless, addicted, have criminal records and unable to hold down a job?
Reckless & ill-Advised Public Policy For Endangered Children
child abuse around the nation and internationally.
In 2020, he child and teen gun death rate in the U.S. was more than 3 times higher than that in Turkey, the country with the next highest rate; 11 times higher than in Israel; 19 times higher than in Switzerland and 85 times higher than in the United Kingdom