They Failed Their Own Test. Who Answers for the Families?

By Maureen Steele

Twenty-five years of federal child welfare reviews. Not one state has fully passed.

That is Washington’s own finding. A November 2025 HHS analysis examined a quarter-century of Child and Family Services Reviews and found that no state had satisfied every required outcome and systemic factor in a complete review.

The government’s own oversight process has documented persistent shortcomings. Families deserve to know what accountability follows.

The Children’s Bureau, within the Department of Health and Human Services, oversees the reviews in partnership with states. They assess seven outcomes involving safety, permanent homes, family relationships, and well-being, alongside seven measures of how the systems function. States can meet individual standards without passing the entire review.

These are meaningful measures. They ask whether children are protected, whether agencies help them remain safely at home, and whether services and case planning meet their needs.

But they are not a comprehensive constitutional audit.

A review of service delivery cannot substitute for an examination of whether a child was lawfully taken. A case plan cannot establish that an accusation was true. A placement statistic cannot tell us whether a judge received fabricated evidence.

Where is the public accounting of removals secured through materially false statements? Of families denied proper notice? Of evidence withheld from parents trying to bring their children home?

I investigated the Rivera family’s case for a documentary. Their five children were separated from them for 15 months after a medical-neglect allegation involving refusal of a vitamin K shot. According to the family and the records reviewed for that investigation, officials falsely represented the father as having a severe mental illness. The family maintains that there was no abuse or evidentiary justification for taking all five children.

All charges were ultimately dropped. My reporting is that authorities could not substantiate the allegations. The dismissal of charges does not, by itself, establish that every decision in a separate child welfare proceeding was unlawful. It does demand a public accounting of what evidence supported the separation and why it lasted so long.

If a false mental-health claim helped secure or prolong custody, returning the children cannot be the end of the inquiry. Who entered that claim? What supported it? Who relied on it? What consequence followed?

A medical disagreement deserves careful examination of the actual risk to each child. The removal of five children demands evidence and individualized justification, not an assumption that an agency’s accusation settles the question.

The legal question is larger than any one family: who answers when officials obtain custody through unlawful means?

The Constitution applies inside child welfare proceedings. Depending on the facts, an unjustified seizure can implicate the Fourth Amendment. Denial of meaningful notice and an opportunity to be heard, deliberate evidence fabrication, and unlawful interference with family integrity can implicate the Fourteenth Amendment.

These are enforceable rights.

42 U.S.C. § 1983 provides a civil remedy for constitutional violations committed under color of state law. Officials can face individual-capacity claims; governmental liability requires its own legal showing. Immunity rules complicate recovery, and the available claims depend on the conduct and jurisdiction. But “child protection” does not make deliberate deception lawful.

In Hardwick v. County of Orange, the Ninth Circuit affirmed denial of absolute and qualified immunity to social workers accused of using fabricated evidence and perjured testimony to remove a child from her mother. This was an immunity ruling, not a nationwide finding about every agency. Its principle was nevertheless unmistakable: purposeful deception in a dependency proceeding cannot be excused as a reasonable mistake.

California Government Code § 820.21 offers a model: it excludes specified malicious conduct from civil immunity, including perjury, evidence fabrication, withholding known exculpatory evidence, and obtaining testimony through fraud or duress.

Criminal accountability must also remain available. Applicable state laws can punish perjury, evidence tampering, and falsification of records when their elements are proved. 18 U.S.C. § 242 permits federal prosecution for willful deprivation of protected rights under color of law. It requires proof of criminal elements; families cannot bring that prosecution themselves.

These laws describe potential violations to investigate, not a verdict against every worker.

Washington’s new “A Home for Every Child” initiative focuses on improving the ratio of foster homes to children, through recruitment and prevention. Participating states submit ratio-focused improvement plans in place of traditional plans.

More suitable homes and fewer unnecessary entries are worthwhile goals. Neither establishes that a removal was lawful.

Congress and state legislatures should require prompt evidentiary hearings, timely access to the agency’s evidence, preservation of original records, documented justification for each child’s removal, and independent investigation of credible allegations of fabrication. Immunity statutes should expressly exclude deliberate falsification and knowing constitutional violations. Oversight should publish findings while protecting children’s identities.

Confidentiality can protect a child without shielding an official’s misconduct. Independent reviewers can inspect sealed records. Public reports can redact names. Privacy cannot become an excuse for unaccountable power.

Funding should support demonstrable safety and lawful practice. More money alone cannot supply either.

The federal response to failed reviews has included improvement plans. That is action, but administrative improvement is not personal accountability for wrongdoing.

Returning a child does not erase the lost months. Closing a file does not repair a family.

An agency powerful enough to separate children from their parents must operate within enforceable limits, and answer when it crosses them.