After the Sandusky child abuse scandal rocked Pennsylvania, the state required more professionals to report suspected child abuse. That led to a strained child welfare system and more unsubstantiated reports against low-income families.

Jatoia Potts lost both her children because she couldn’t explain her baby’s injuries. She's still fighting to get them back with her family.

A movement to change the child welfare system asks caseworkers to speak up.

The 147-page report, “‘If I Wasn’t Poor, I Wouldn’t Be Unfit’: The Family Separation Crisis in the US Child Welfare System,” documents how conditions of poverty, such as a family’s struggle to pay rent or maintain housing, are misconstrued as neglect, and interpreted as evidence of an inability and lack of fitness to parent. Human Rights Watch and the ACLU found significant racial and socioeconomic disparities in child welfare involvement. Black children are almost twice as likely to experience investigations as white children and more likely to be separated from their families.

Oftentimes, youth enter foster care due to neglect.  According to the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) data for Fiscal Year 2021, of the nearly 400,000 children in foster care in the United States, 63% of these youth found themselves within the child welfare system because neglect – over 130,000 youth in…

MIAMI — Two days after Alysha Princess Cesaire gave birth to her son on Feb. 1, 2018, someone at Hollywood’s Memorial Regional Hospital phoned the state’s child abuse hotline to e…

Explore data about state approaches, children in care, and how money is invested in foster care vs. preventive and permanency services.

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The Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) collects case-level information on all children in foster care and those who have been adopted with title IV-E agency involvement.

Following an NPR investigation, the Department of Health and Human Services issued guidance to state and county officials that lets them stop charging parents whose children are placed in foster care.

In at least 36 states and the District of Columbia, child welfare agencies use a child's benefit checks to offset the cost of foster care, often leaving them with a tattered safety net as adults.

It's shockingly easy for CPS to destroy poor, Black families.

Resource parents provide love and support, and many former foster youth go on to graduate college and rise above their traumas and struggles.

A disproportionate number of Black children are removed from their homes in L.A. County. Now, the county has backed a "blind removal" pilot for study.