Each April, Child Abuse Awareness Month invites reflection on the systems responsible for protecting children and supporting families — and on the weight of that work for those doing it every day.
There is a story I have often thought about in relation to this work.
The Starfish Story has been shared in many forms over the years.
A young child walks along a shoreline covered with thousands of stranded starfish. One by one, the child begins picking them up and throwing them back into the ocean. When someone points out that the beach stretches for miles and the effort cannot possibly make a difference at that scale, the response is simple:
It made a difference to that one.
It is a powerful story. And for many in child welfare, it feels familiar.
There are moments in this work where you know, without question, that what you did mattered. A child is safer. A family is stabilized. A situation shifts because someone showed up, paid attention and acted.
Those moments are real, and they matter.
But the story also reflects something else — something that is often harder to name. The sense that no matter how much effort is given, the work itself does not change. The same patterns continue. Similar cases keep coming. Decisions are made under pressure, often without a shared understanding of what should happen next.
[Related: Children suffer when child welfare ignores the evidence base]
For many frontline professionals and supervisors, this creates a kind of tension that is difficult to sustain.
You can make a difference in individual moments and still feel like the system is not moving.
This is not a reflection of a lack of commitment, skill or care. It is a reflection of how the system is structured.
Each year, millions of children are the subject of child abuse and neglect reports in the United States. According to national data, child protective services received approximately 4.4 million referrals in 2023, involving an estimated 7.78 million children. But the scale of the system does not impact all families equally.
Decades of research and public statistics have consistently shown that Black children are disproportionately impacted at every stage of the child welfare system. More than half of Black children in the United States will experience a child welfare investigation before the age of 18 — nearly double the rate of white children. Nearly 1 in 10 Black children will be removed from their homes and placed into foster care, and a significant number will experience permanent separation from their parents through termination of parental rights. These patterns reflect not only differences in system involvement but differences in how families are perceived, reported and responded to.
At the same time, conditions associated with poverty are frequently interpreted as neglect, bringing families into the system not because of willful harm but because of unmet need. My own research examining media portrayals of African American mothers accused of filicide found that narratives of danger, blame and moral failure are disproportionately assigned — shaping not only public perception but reinforcing broader patterns that influence decision-making within child welfare systems. When risk is interpreted through these lenses, similar circumstances are not experienced the same way. Instead, outcomes are shaped as much by perception as by policy.
Research has long documented that decision-making in child welfare — particularly at key points such as screening, investigation and removal — can vary across jurisdictions and individual workers, even when families present with similar circumstances. This variability has been widely discussed in the field as a function of differing policies, thresholds and interpretations of risk.
For example, national data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services shows significant variation in how states respond to child maltreatment reports, including differences in screening decisions, substantiation rates and removal practices.
Additional analysis has highlighted how decision-making points in child welfare systems are influenced by local policy, workforce conditions and system design — factors that can lead to inconsistent experiences for families across systems.
Child welfare does not operate within a single, clearly defined framework for decision-making. Instead, it relies on a combination of policy, interpretation and professional judgment that can vary across systems, offices and individuals.
Courtesy of Channing L. Collins
Channing L. Collins
In that kind of environment, consistency and equity become difficult to achieve.
The Starfish Story captures the importance of individual action. But in child welfare, it also highlights the limitations of a system that depends on it.
Child Abuse Awareness Month brings attention to the urgency of protecting children. It also presents an opportunity to look more closely at how the system itself functions.
[Related: What we don’t say about child sexual abuse — and why it matters]
A more effective approach to child welfare requires greater clarity and alignment in how the system operates.
This begins with defining decisions more clearly — establishing shared standards for what safety requires, when intervention is appropriate and what must be demonstrated before more intrusive actions are taken.
It also requires strengthening how practice is supported. Workers should not be left to navigate complex, high-stakes decisions without structure. Systems must provide clear processes, consistent expectations and decision pathways that reduce ambiguity rather than rely on individual interpretation.
Finally, it requires greater precision in the most consequential determinations the system makes — particularly when intervention is warranted and when removal is justified. These decisions should be grounded in transparent, consistently applied criteria and consistently check for bias.
When decision-making is defined, practice is supported and thresholds are clear, the work begins to shift. Outcomes become more consistent. Workers are better supported. And the system becomes less dependent on individual discretion and more reflective of a shared standard.
The Starfish Story reminds us that individual actions matter.
Child welfare requires that the system does too.
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Channing L. Collins is a child welfare and policy executive with a decade of leadership experience in Indiana and Illinois. She holds a Ph.D. in criminal justice (law and public policy), a master’s degree in dispute resolution from Pepperdine University and is pursuing a master’s degree in legal studies at the University of Arizona. She is the author of a 12-point child welfare reform blueprint focused on safety, equity and workforce stability.
