Fixing DCFS requires understanding that the tragic errors go in all directions

A recent legislative audit blasted Utah’s Division of Child and Family Services. (Getty Images)

By now, so many oversight agencies in so many states have issued reports about those states’ child welfare systems, and those reports so often are accurately described as “scathing,” that it may as well be one word.

But the ScathingReport issued by the Utah Office of the Legislative Auditor General concerning the state Division of Child and Family Services includes a commendable difference: It recognizes that in “child welfare,” the terrible mistakes go in all directions. Understanding that is essential if DCFS is ever going to be fixed.

As Utah News Dispatch reports, the Utah audit tells us that “In one case, a child remained with a caregiver for weeks despite a dire warning from a medical professional who found the child at high risk of further injury or death” while in another, “Auditors said a caseworker went to a hospital to secretly observe a family and ‘unfairly accused them of neglecting their child.’ The case landed in court and a judge dismissed it.” And while not included in the audit, in still another case, a mother was investigated because her child was involved in roughhousing at a children’s soccer game. 

These cases are not really opposites — they’re directly related. Most caseworkers are neither jack-booted thugs who relish destroying families, nor are they lazy and don’t care if children die. They are typically dedicated but overwhelmed. Here’s what’s overwhelming them:

Utah tears apart families and consigns children to the chaos of foster care at a rate more than 40% above the national average, even when rates of child poverty are factored in. There is no evidence that Utah is a cesspool of depravity with 40% more child abuse than the national average.

Indeed, in most cases, “abuse” isn’t even alleged. In 71% of cases where children were thrown into foster care in 2024, there was not even an accusation of sexual abuse or any form of physical abuse. Far more common are cases in which family poverty is confused with neglect. In Utah, in a stunning 44% of cases, children were taken away for reasons including homelessness or lack of housing.

So it’s no wonder that study after study finds that children left in their own homes typically fare better even than comparably maltreated children placed in foster care.

That harm occurs even when the foster home is a good one. The majority are. But the rate of abuse in foster care is far higher than generally realized and far higher than in the general population. Multiple studies have found abuse in one-quarter to one-third of foster homes. The rate of abuse in group homes and institutions is even worse. That’s especially alarming in Utah, which warehouses more than 40% of foster youth in these places, one of the highest rates in the country and nearly quadruple the national average.

But even that isn’t the worst of it. The more that workers are overwhelmed with false allegations, trivial cases and children who don’t need to be in foster care, the less time they have to find children in real danger.

So they make even more mistakes in all directions. That’s almost always the real reason for the horror stories about children left in dangerous homes.

Think of all the time spent spying on that innocent family and investigating alleged unnecessary roughness during a soccer game. That time was, in effect, stolen from finding the next child who needs to be rescued from the brink of death. 

That’s why these crucial first steps are needed to start to make all of Utah’s vulnerable children safer:

• Become laser-focused on ameliorating the worst stresses of poverty. Once again, the evidence is in: One study after another finds that even small amounts of concrete help, such as child care assistance, housing vouchers, and cash assistance, put a big dent in rates of child neglect, and even severe abuse.
• Provide high-quality family defense to every family from the moment DCFS knocks on the door. That means a defense team: A lawyer, a social worker, and often an advocate who’s been through the system. No, it’s not to get “bad parents” off the hook, it’s to craft alternatives to the cookie-cutter “service plans” often churned out by agencies like DCFS. It’s been proven to reduce foster care with no compromise of safety.

Take these steps, and others, and more children are likely to be spared from abuse, more children are likely to be spared the trauma of needless foster care, and next time, the Legislative Auditor General’s Office might be able to issue a NotSoScathingReport.