Dorothy Roberts Thinks We Need a New Way to Keep Kids Safe

Dorothy Roberts is an academic, 2024 MacArthur “genius” grantee, and author who is advocating for what, at first blush, seems like a really crazy idea: the abolition of child-protective services. CPS is a catchall term for the system of government agencies that step in when they deem children to be in danger, sometimes removing them from their homes. But after decades of study, Roberts, 58, has concluded that this system of what she calls “family policing” is doing far more harm than good, especially for Black families. 

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The problem, as Roberts sees it, is that CPS does not protect children. “This is not a system that supports families,” she says. “It does a terrible job at keeping children safe. It’s really a system that terrorizes families and tears them apart and doesn’t provide what families need.” It’s also a system that affects Black children much more than white children; research has consistently shown that Black families are almost twice as likely as white families to be investigated by CPS.

One of the issues is that when CPS comes to a family’s home, it is responding to a report of abuse and neglect. “It doesn’t go into action when people go to it asking for help,” says Roberts. “It goes into action when parents or other family caregivers are accused of maltreatment, which usually means they simply have failed to provide for their children the housing or clothing or food that their children need.” In other words, CPS too often shows up at the homes of parents who are impoverished rather than neglectful. And instead of helping provide for the children’s needs, it separates them, even before the case has been fully investigated.

It then falls to the parents to prove they are not neglectful to get their families restored. “You’re assumed guilty and now you’ve got to prove that you actually care for your children, under these terrible conditions that make it even harder to care for your children,” says Roberts. She points to a drop in child-maltreatment reports during the pandemic, when temporary child tax-credit payments pulled many children out of poverty, and many civic groups came together to support struggling families. “Child poverty is much more harmful to children than the acts of individual parents on their children,” she says. 

The federal Administration for Children and Families, which funds the state-run child-protective agencies, declined to comment for this article, citing a pause on media communication as the new Administration gets under way.

Roberts is not opposed to reforming the system but believes the wiser path is to dismantle it and start over. “It isn’t the kind of system you can fix because its core, its very foundations, are so oppressive,” she says. “Just as important as dismantling this harmful system is replacing it simultaneously with a better approach to keeping children safe and supporting families.” If, rather than having their children taken from them, she says, parents were given more financial, health, and relational support, it could lead to better outcomes for parents, kids, and their communities.

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