[2] In 1696, The Kingdom of England first used the legal principle of parens patriae, which gave the royal crown care of "charities, infants, idiots, and lunatics returned to the chancery".
[13] In the 1940s and 1950s, due to improved technology in diagnostic radiology, the medical profession began to take notice of what they believed to be intentional injuries, the so-called "shaken baby syndrome".
[7] In addition to family services, the focus of federal child welfare policy changed to try to address permanence for the large numbers of foster children care.
[25] The federal government passed Bill C-92—officially known as An Act Respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis Children, Youth and Families—in June 2019 coming into force on January 1, 2020.
In recognition of attachment issues, social work good practice requires a minimal number of moves and the 1989 Children Act enshrines the principle that delay is inimical to a child's welfare.
In the event of the death or serious injury of a child, LSCBs can initiate a "Serious Case Review" aimed at identifying agency failings and improving future practice.
However, it attempts to gather a more comprehensive picture of the incidence of child abuse and neglect by collecting data from other reporting sources called "community sentinels".
[50] Since 2004, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services had itself been an object of reports of unusual numbers of poisonings, deaths, rapes and pregnancies of children under its care.
The Texas Family and Protective Services Crisis Management Team was created by executive order after the critical report Forgotten Children of 2004.
Investigators, including supervisor Angie Voss convinced a judge that all of the children were at risk of child abuse because they were all being groomed for under-age marriage.
Gene Grounds of Victim Relief Ministries commended CPS workers in the Texas operation as exhibiting compassion, professionalism and caring concern.
[53] The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, as with other states, had itself been an object of reports of unusual numbers of poisonings, death, rapes and pregnancies of children under its care since 2004.
The Texas Family and Protective Services Crisis Management Team was created by executive order after the critical report Forgotten Children[54] of 2004.
Building on other recent work, our data suggest a critical need for increased preventative and treatment resources in the area of child maltreatment.
05-16071[62] that a CPS social worker who removed children from their natural parents into foster care without obtaining judicial authorization was acting without due process and without exigency (emergency conditions) violated the 14th Amendment and Title 42 United States Code Section 1983.
[65] In 2010 an ex-foster child was awarded $30 million by jury trial in Santa Clara County, California for sexual abuse damages that happened to him in foster home from 1995 to 1999; he was represented by attorney Stephen John Estey.
[66][67][68] The foster parent, John Jackson, was licensed by state despite the fact that he abused his own wife and son, overdosed on drugs and was arrested for drunken driving.
[69] In 2009 the Oregon Department of Human Services agreed to pay $2 million into a fund for the future care of twins who were allegedly abused by their foster parents; it was the largest such settlement in the agency's history.
[70] According to the civil rights suit filed on request of twins' adoptive mother in December 2007 in U.S. Federal Court, children were kept in makeshift cages—cribs covered with chicken wire secured by duct tape—in a darkened bedroom known as "the dungeon".
[70] Several lawsuits were brought in 2008 against the Florida Department of Children & Families (DCF), accusing it of mishandling reports that Thomas Ferrara, 79, a foster parent, was molesting girls.
[74][75][76] In 1999 a class action lawsuit Charlie and Nadine H. v. Christie[77] was filed in federal court by "Children's Rights" a national advocacy group working to reform child welfare.
DYFS is recruiting and licensing more foster parents; caseworkers are better trained and have more manageable caseloads; and in 2007 New Jersey broke its own record for the most adoptions finalized in one year.
However, significant challenges lie ahead..." In 2007, with Shawn McMillan as her lead trial attorney, Deanna Fogarty-Hardwick obtained a jury verdict against Orange County, California and two of its social workers for violating her Fourteenth Amendment rights to familial association.
[79] During the appeals process it was argued by the defense attorneys that the caseworkers had a right to fabricate evidence and lie to the court in order to facilitate the continued removal of the child from her family.
It was adamantly argued, by the defense, that caseworkers should be allowed to make up things in order to sway the judges decision to remove a child from his or her fit parents.
In 2018 Rafaelina Duval obtained a jury verdict against Los Angeles County, California and two of its social workers for an unwarranted seizure of her child.
[80] In 2019, with the assistance of attorney McMillan, Rachel Bruno obtained an award against social services and Children's Hospital of Orange County (CHOC) after they took her 20-month-old son and ran unauthorized medical tests on him and injected him with a dozen vaccinations at the same time.
In addition to the challenges of a lack of resources and large caseloads, the Office of Inspector General identified issues that hinder effective service delivery.
The initiative focuses on recruiting and retaining social workers with training and support in order to provide an effective resource for children and their family.
States are doing different partnerships with colleges and universities to provide recruitment strategies that could attract students to find interest in the career of social work.