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What is Child Safety?

(Originally published September 2024)

Frequent references to child safety in law, child welfare policy, practice frameworks, scholarly studies and public relations releases may lead to the assumption that child safety has a widely understood meaning that does not require explicit definition. This assumption is mistaken. Depending on the context in which the phrase, “child safety” appears, speakers or authors may be referring to the mission of child protection, drawing a contrast between child safety and child well-being in a discussion of child welfare outcomes, making a strict distinction between risk and safety in CPS assessments, or setting forth criteria for determining that a child is “unsafe” when recommending placement of a child in foster care. Scholars and program managers discuss measures of child safety outcomes, e.g., rates of multiple substantiations or CPS re-reports, indicators that refer to generic protection from child maltreatment, a concept very different from caseworkers’ reference to “safety threats.”

Conflating these various meanings of “child safety,” while not usually deliberate, has served the political and organizational goal of narrowing the concept of “child safety” without appearing to compromise or redefine the goals and scope of child protection in US child welfare systems. Those who have never worked in child welfare, or a judicial system, human services agency, or been a foster parent or CASA volunteer may assume they have an intuitive understanding of child safety. However, they might be surprised with how law, child welfare policy and practice apply the concept in Washington State and nationally.

States’ neglect statutes

States’ child neglect statutes, without exception, define neglect as the “failure”, “refusal,” “inability” or “fault” of parents and other caregivers to provide their children with “proper”, “essential,” “necessary” or “adequate” care; or by reference to “negligent treatment or maltreatment” that harms (or creates a substantial risk of harm) to a child’s health, safety or well-being.

The emphasis on parental responsibility for care of children is so pervasive in state statutes it’s rarely mentioned in policy discussions. Some, but not all, state statutes contain an exception to the legal duty of parents to provide, adequate, necessary or essential care to their children due to poverty. However, until recently there was not a single state statute that combines a poverty exception such as “unless financially able to do so” with the requirement that the public agency investigating or assessing an allegation of neglect assist parents or other caregivers find resources to meet their child’s basic needs, and/or require the public agency to provide necessary resources.

Since 2023, Washington State’s Department of Children, Youth and Family Services (DCYF) has had a policy which states that caseworkers “Must provide concrete goods to children, youth, parents, guardians and other suitable persons that are in the home, out-of-the-home or to remove barriers to timely reunification when a) funding is available and approved; b) purchases are made which are economic and reasonable; c) goods and services meet the identified need to maintain safety, well-being, or stability in a placement.”

The policy also states that concrete assistance cannot be used for “ongoing support” without clearly stating whether concrete assistance must be one time only, or can be provided as long as there is an open case.

This policy is a big step in the right direction, but it is not the same as a statutory mandate to assist parents meet the basic needs of their children, as needed. Washington State’s neglect statute is unusual in that child homelessness, in and of itself, is not grounds for screening in a CPS report for investigation / assessment, which means that even in the direst circumstances resulting from severe poverty there may not a legal requirement for CPS to reach out to a family to offer assistance, and no assurance that any other public or private agency will do so.

Child protection statutes in Washington and other states were not developed to assure that children’s basic needs are met, including the need for nurture, which is critical for infants’ and toddlers’ brain development. Rather, law and policy has been a response to the question, “what are the grounds for investigating alleged abuse or neglect of children by caregivers?” What this means concretely is that families with children can be left chronically food insecure or (in Washington) living under a bridge in a cardboard box without CPS involvement, while an allegation of a young school age child being left unsupervised for a couple of hours after school might be screened in for a CPS assessment.

Child protection statutes in Washington have been greatly impacted by parent advocacy for decades. More than twenty years ago, domestic violence advocates were successful in convincing the legislature to prohibit investigations of children’s witnessing of domestic violence when a child’s physical safety was not endangered on the grounds that CPS interventions often did more harm than good in these situations by “blaming the victim,” i.e., usually the mother. But what if there is a pattern of family violence that does great developmental harm to children, including undermining their sense of emotional safety in the world? If there is no CPS response, what other public policy response is there?

Washington is one of few states (possibly the only state) whose neglect statute does not contain a definition or explicit reference to emotional neglect and abuse. Whatever the grounds for ignoring emotional maltreatment when Washington’s statute was drafted decades ago, this omission has arguably made it easier to disregard emotional maltreatment in law and policy developed in recent years, e.g., the Keeping Families Together Act (KFTA), which requires evidence that a child is at risk of imminent physical harm to justify removal from the home.

The DCYF safety framework (see below) is concerned with emotional harm, including a child’s feelings regarding her/his own safety, only when the harm in question is severe and immediate. (“Introduction to Child Safety Framework,” 2022). Concretely, what this means is that the cumulative emotional and developmental harms of child maltreatment, possibly the greatest impact of child maltreatment across the lifespan, is not a child safety concern in Washington, and can be ignored by virtue of DCYF policy. Ditto for the cumulative physical harms of child maltreatment as found in numerous studies of adverse childhood experiences (ACE). These harms include a wide range of lifelong physical ailments, emotional and behavioral problems, including elevated rates of early mortality from childhood through all phases of adulthood. From this perspective, “Unsafe” refers to the danger of imminent harm or harm in the near future, and ignores cumulative harm that occurs gradually over months or years.

The DCYF Safety Framework

For several years DCYF has utilized a framework for safety assessment and safety planning developed from the Action for Child Protection SAFE model. This model has been implemented in a number of states, with a wide variety of outcomes. One reason for the popularity of the Action safety framework, and other similar frameworks, is that the model makes a strict distinction between safety and risk, as well as offering guidelines for decision making when child safety is endangered, guidelines that were often not a part of early risk assessment models.

In this model, a child is Safe or Unsafe vs. risk assessment models which view risk and safety as a continuum from low risk to high risk, with only a fraction of children assessed as “high risk” for child maltreatment being deemed as at risk of imminent harm. In practice, safety frameworks have served the goal of narrowing the scope of child protection both in response to workload pressures, and also to serve the goal of limiting CPS interventions to only the most serious cases of imminent or “impending” maltreatment. The Safe vs. Unsafe way of viewing child safety is conceptually indefensible, but child welfare agencies have adopted it in order to set a high threshold for CPS intervention. Children not in immediate danger may be assessed as Safe despite being classified as “high risk” for abuse or neglect, even when there is a history of chronic maltreatment that occurs on a regular basis when children are not seriously injured. This is a strange view of child safety, to put it mildly.

This is not hypothetical conjecture. An April 2024 report from the DCYF Data Unit states: “Since 2020, DCYF has seen an increasing percentage of moderately high to high-risk cases being rereferred to CPS intake and screened in (within 90 days of completion of the risk assessment.”) Concretely, what this means is that in the DCYF safety framework, children not in immediate danger are often assessed as SAFE even when they are at high risk for future maltreatment, which has led to an increased rate of rereport of these children.

Imminent harm and impending danger

A 2022 DCYF PowerPoint, “Introduction to Child Safety Framework,” asserts the following:

“Children are SAFE when there are no present danger or impending danger threats OR the caregivers’ protective capacities control all known safety threats.”
“Children are UNSAFE when they are vulnerable to present or impending danger, and caregivers are unable or unwilling to provide protection.”
“Present danger is immediate, significant and clearly observable severe harm or threat of severe harm occurring in the present.”

This is a conceptually abstract definition of child safety and child endangerment delivered with few examples, which suggests the importance of training programs and close supervision for clarifying the operational meaning of these concepts with inexperienced staff. DCYF’s Annual Progress and Services Reports (APSR) indicate that the child safety framework is used erratically and inconsistently, which is inevitable in learning to apply concepts such as “safety threat,” “present danger,” “impending danger,” and “control of all known safety threats.” What, for example, does “control of all known safety threats” mean when applied to substance misuse, chronic mental illness and domestic violence?

However, persons who lack a background in risk assessment may miss the underlying implication of the requirement that present danger or impending danger must be “clearly observable severe harm or threat of harm occurring in the present.” One of the main principles of risk assessment in child protection is that “the best predictor of future maltreatment is past maltreatment.” The insistence on “clearly observable severe harm occurring in the present” in safety assessments is possibly a means of undercutting this risk assessment axiom without stating explicitly: “A child cannot be deemed Unsafe based solely on a caregiver’s history of child maltreatment.” This meaning is likely to be clear to developers of assessment tools, experienced program managers and supervisors, but not inexperienced child welfare staff or judges.

The idea that an extensive history of child maltreatment cannot be the sole (or main) basis for assessing a child to be Unsafe is a radical idea that may be endorsed by some caseworkers and supervisors but rejected by others. For example, when there has been a child fatality due to an opioid overdose or unsafe sleep practices, due (in part) to a parent’s substance misuse, and the parent has not completed a substance abuse treatment program, how should child safety be assessed when the mother gives birth to another child? Should CPS screen out a report based on a history of a child maltreatment fatality or near fatality until there is information regarding “clearly observable harm or threat of harm occurring in the present,” or, if the report is investigated, disregard the history of a child maltreatment fatality in the safety assessment?

The same question can be asked in regard to families in which a child has died or been severely injured due to violence. Clearly, there are child safety concerns in these families as indicated by their history of child maltreatment even when there does not appear to be risk of imminent harm, or impending danger. Ditto for families in which one of the caregivers has a history of child sexual abuse, or of tolerating child sexual abuse.

Child welfare agencies that ignore or disregard a caregivers’ history of child maltreatment in their safety assessments (per policy) are engaging in Unsafe child protection practice. It is often reasonable to consider factors other than a history of child maltreatment and related substance misuse, mental illness, domestic violence, e.g., a parent’s involvement in services, or major life changes and supportive relationships, in child safety assessments.

In some families, a history of child maltreatment should be viewed in the context of changes in a caregiver’s behavior and life circumstances. However, a history of maltreatment that has caused severe harm to children should never be ignored or minimized because there is no current indication of a safety threat.

Present danger vs. Impending danger

Trainers typically have difficulty clearly explaining the difference between

Present and Impending danger, which can only be done through case examples that often elicit differences of opinion regarding concrete applications of this distinction. Impending danger is a risk assessment of a sort, i.e., of the likelihood of severe harm due to child maltreatment in the near future. Like all risk assessments, it is a judgment likely to be influenced by case history, which is confusing to caseworkers being trained to the idea of a strict distinction between risk and safety concerns and encouraged to ignore a history of maltreatment, regardless of severity.

Until recently, the difference between Present and Impending danger was of small import, and probably of little or no interest to most CPS caseworkers applying the DCYF safety framework. However, KFTA, implemented in 2023, makes risk of imminent harm the grounds for involuntary out-of-home placement, which gives added importance to this distinction. If the history of risk assessment is a reliable guide (highly likely), then caseworkers and supervisors will often decide the question of Present vs. Impending danger on operational grounds rather than conceptually: “Present danger exists when I have decided to seek out-of-home placement; Impending danger exists when I have chosen to develop an in-home safety plan.”

Summary

Many child welfare systems around the country, including Washington, have increasingly adopted a definition and understanding of child safety that:

Equates child safety with lack of danger defined as imminent or impending safety threats
Draws a strict distinction between risk and safety
Does not include physical or psychological security
Gives little or no weight to a child’s feeling of emotional safety
Allows chronically neglected and abused children who are not seriously physically injured to be repeatedly assessed as Safe
Is unconcerned with the cumulative physical and emotional harms of child maltreatment that occur gradually but may not be apparent initially
May ignore or minimize severe histories of child maltreatment in safety assessments

Furthermore, all of this has occurred with repeated assurances from child welfare leaders that child safety is the overriding goal of child protection.

References

“Keeping Families Together Act,” Quarterly Update, April 2024, Washington State Department of Children, Youth and Families, Olympia, Washington; available online.

“Introduction to Child Safety Framework,” (December 2022), Washington State Department of Children, Youth and Families, Olympia, Washington; available online

2023 Annual Progress and Services Report, Washington State Department of Children, Youth and Families, Olympia, Washington; available online.

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©Dee Wilson

deewilson13@aol.com