A country administrator once told us that after a parent has murdered a child they remove surviving siblings from the home, but return them as soon as possible “unless there’s a good reason not to.”
Some child fatalities are tragic accidents. But the deaths of 88 Minnesota children in our current study were due to maltreatment by parents with some history of child abuse. Our preliminary findings are that in eight cases, or 9%, siblings were returned home while charges were pending, a process which 23% of the time takes over a year or never happens at all.
Practices like these have gradually become normalized over decades of making family preservation child welfare’s top priority. They demonstrate how far the field has strayed from its mission to protect children. It’s our job, together, to help them get back on course.