Beyond Quick Fixes: What will it really take to improve child welfare in America?

This is the second in a series of articles regarding the current status of child protection services in the United States and proposals to address its challenges. For decades, state and local agencies have struggled to provide the appropriate quality of responsive child protection services. Untold dollars have been spent at every level of government in an effort to protect children and, at the same time, address issues within the family structure that may put a child at risk of maltreatment. Too often, the system’s efforts to improve or correct the perceived deficiencies within an agency have been misdirected, misguided, or even inappropriate.

These articles are designed to identify specific issues, analyze typical or traditional responses to those identified issues, and propose fundamental and substantially new alternatives to addressing the issues faced by child protective agencies. It is important to note that no single recommendation will provide substantial improvement in the quality of response and services. The system is far too complicated and interrelated for a single improvement to successfully improve the system for any length of time. These articles must necessarily be integrated to allow for substantial transformation, which will be real, meaningful, and long-lasting.