In October, Nyisha Ragsdale, the maternal aunt of four-year-old Jahmeik Modlin, filed a lawsuit against the New York City Administration for Children’s Services (ACS), claiming that the city could have saved her nephew from being starved to death at the hands of his parents. Standing by her side was none other than the Reverend Al Sharpton. Sharpton’s presence at a press conference announcing a multimillion-dollar lawsuit is not surprising, of course, but it was incongruous to see the famous race huckster demanding more intervention by government authorities into the lives of black families. Maybe it’s a sign that the tide is turning, that the Left is finally ready to acknowledge that child protective services (CPS) and law enforcement are integral to the protection of innocent black lives. Regardless, such lawsuits may be one of the only ways to shed light on a system that seems increasingly unresponsive to children in danger.

Jahmeik’s case made headlines beyond New York City. Despite multiple prior allegations of maltreatment, ACS allowed Jahmeik and his three older siblings to remain in their parents’ home. When he was found near death, he weighed only 19 pounds. And the refrigerator stocked with food in his family’s apartment was turned around so that neither he nor his siblings (ages five, six, and seven) could access it. The other three were hospitalized as a result of severe malnourishment.

In recent years, more and more child welfare agencies have taken a hands-off approach in an effort to reduce racial disparities in the system. New York City, for its part, has tried to deflect more reports of neglect to the Collaborative Assessment, Response, Engagement & Support (CARES) program. Rather than doing an investigation in cases that are deemed to be low risk, CARES offers the families services to support them. In order to “combat racial disparities” and “promote social justice,” CARES “encourage[s] families to develop their own solutions to their challenges.” Parental drug use and criminal behavior are no longer automatic triggers for investigation. And rather than focus on child safety, ACS has added “Family Enrichment Centers” to promote “social connection” and “parental resilience.”

All of this seems to be placing at-risk children in greater danger. In recent years, nationwide the number of children in foster care fell by nearly 16 percent, while the fatality rate from abuse and neglect reported to the federal government rose by almost 18 percent. But few policy makers seem very interested in the problem. As researchers Emily Putnam-Hornstein and Sarah Font recently wrote, “in the face of what appears to be a real, and sustained, national increase in deaths due to child abuse and neglect (a trend that continues as states begin to release data for 2023–2024), there remains strong resistance among child welfare scholars, advocates and national leaders to discussing maltreatment fatalities.” Agencies put policies in place that may leave more children at risk, but then when a child dies, they do not come clean with the public about what went wrong.

In a recent interview with the cable channel NY1, ACS director Jess Dannhauser defended his decision to withhold information: “I don’t believe that discussing the details of individual families’ lives is the best way to drive system change. When it’s important, when the public needs to know if we get something terribly wrong, I’ll make sure that they know.”

Who, then, will force their hands? Ideally, legislators would exercise more oversight. Recently, for instance, a member of the Board of Supervisors in Santa Clara County, Calif., raked Damion Wright over the coals. Wright, who is the head of the Department of Family and Children’s Services, appeared before the board to explain the death of baby Phoenix Castro from an overdose of methamphetamines. Exposed to drugs in utero and then placed, over the objections of a social worker, with a father who had multiple drug arrests, Phoenix was just one victim of a policy to decrease removals of children from families. 

Supervisor Sylvia Arenas offered a blistering critique of Wright and his subordinates, with her voice “nearly trembling with anger at times, and her three targets shrinking in awkward silences,” according to the San Jose Mercury News. “The system works as well as the people who run it,” she said, “and sometimes we have to ask a question whether we have the right people . . . to actually carry out the work.” Unfortunately, her fellow supervisors did not seem interested in a leadership change at the agency. In Utah, legislative hearings were held recently about the death of twelve-year-old Gavin Peterson, whose father, stepmother, and adult biological brother have been charged with child-abuse homicide. Whether things will change remains an open question.

Who else might speak on behalf of these children? For years, foster parents have tried to raise red flags about the treatment that kids they care for sometimes experience when they visit or are reunited with their biological families. But foster parents are an imperfect vehicle for this message. Though they often know these kids better than most other adults in their lives, caseworkers and judges tend to see foster parents as self-interested. Maybe, the thinking goes, they just want these kids for adoption; so we cannot trust what they say. Unfortunately, many foster families also suffer retaliation at the hands of child welfare workers if they do speak up.

The extended family of the deceased may be the best hope for holding these agencies accountable. The relatives of Sophia Mason, for instance, have filed a civil suit in California against the Alameda County Department of Children and Family Services for failing to investigate five of the seven reports that came in during the months before the eight-year-old’s murder. Caseworkers even claimed in the files to have seen Sophia when they had not actually laid eyes on her. Another California lawsuit filed on behalf of a baby girl by her siblings’ adoptive mother against Contra Costa County Children and Family Services alleges that the child’s parents, who both had open criminal warrants, were allowed to have unsupervised overnight visits with her despite not complying with court-ordered drug testing. And caseworkers hid medical documents from the court describing bruises and scratches on the baby that were clearly signs of abuse.

These lawsuits have begun to shine a light on the dangerous decisions that are being made by child protective services. And the cost to these departments could be significant. 

When it comes to child protection, we may be seeing a kind of “Ferguson effect” in which the threat of legal action or negative media coverage or pressure from politicians has pushed CPS to retreat from its job. And just as occurred after Ferguson and similar incidents, when communities saw a spike in crime as a result of police retreating, we may be seeing a spike in child maltreatment and fatalities as a result of CPS’s reacting to a constant barrage of claims that the system is racist. In a world in which law enforcement and child protection agencies are constantly worried about the legal trouble they might incur for being overzealous, perhaps the only answer is to put a thumb on the other side of the scale.