Child Protection Law as an Independent Variable

• Author: Josh Gupta‐Kagan
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12230
• Published date: 01 July 2016
• Date: 01 July 2016

CHILD PROTECTION LAW AS AN INDEPENDENT VARIABLE

Josh Gupta-Kagan*

Child protection professionals work in a multidisciplinary system in which the law and the family court play central roles and

which collects an increasing amount of data. Yet we know little about what impact the law has on whether a child is removed

by child protective services, is deemed neglected by a family court, or reunifies with a parent. Do state-to-state variations in

child protection laws, or changes by individual states to their laws, lead to different outcomes for children and families? The

dramatic variations in child welfare practice from one state to another suggest that legal variations do matter. Yet empirical

research on these questions is scarce both because we collect too little data to measure all such issues, and, because we have

failed to study the data we do have. This article is a plea for researchers to rectify that problem and for policymakers to

improve data collection. Doing so would facilitate a more clear understanding of the law’s effect on child protection outcomes

and aid policymakers and advocates in identifying both promising and problematic practices and legal reforms.

Key Points for the Family Court Community:

Significant legal variations exist between states and may help explain different outcomes in different state child protec-

tion systems.

The child protection field now collects large amounts of data, but little data focused on legal procedures or substantive

legal differences from state to state. As a result, the field knows relatively little about how legal variables affect

outcomes.

A better understanding of the impact on legal variables will help answer important policy, advocacy, and academic

questions about child protection law and family courts.

This article argues for reforms to data collection policies to enable further study of legal variables and for researchers

to make greater use of existing data.

Keywords: Child Protection System; Child Welfare; Empirical/Statistical Data; Family Court; and State Law & Policy.

I. INTRODUCTION

Child protection professionals work in a multidisciplinary system in which the law and the family

court play central roles. Yet we know little about what impact the law has on whether a child is

removed by child protective services, is adjudicated neglected by a family court, or is reunified with

a parent. Do state-to-state variations in child protection laws or changes by individual states to their

laws lead to different outcomes for children and families? Empirical research on this questions is

scarce. This scarcity is both because we collect too little data to measure all such issues, and, because

we have failed to study the data we do have. This article is a plea for researchers to rectify that prob-

lem and for policymakers to improve data collection policies to help research the law’s effect on child

protection outcomes.

We live in an era of big data, and child protection is no exception. We are awash in local, state,

and federally reported data, and we work in a multidisciplinary field in which empirical studies are

now common and have undoubtedly advanced our field. We have a much better understanding today

than, say, twenty years ago of what factors place children most at risk, how such factors correlate

with family court decisions, how removal from families and placement in foster care can affect chil-

dren (positively and negatively), and what programs are effective at preventing or treating child

maltreatment.

Yet we are not much closer than we were decades ago to understanding how legal variations affect

what happens in child protection cases. The most widely available data does not include important

Correspondence: jgkagan@law.sc.edu

FAMILY COURT REVIEW, Vol. 54 No. 3, July 2016 398–412

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C2016 Association of Family and Conciliation Courts