ETHICAL INJUSTICES
Child safety interventions are justified only when they reduce harm. Practices that punish protective action, destabilize safe family environments, or expose children to new trauma fail that standard. An ethical system must align its outcomes with its stated purpose: to protect children without inflicting additional risk or damage.
CPS should not endanger a child because a parent acted to protect them.
ADVERSE CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES
Protective parents are stripped of their most fundamental rights when seeking safety results in surveillance, punishment, and family separation. Every child has the right to remain with a safe caregiver, and every parent has the right to defend their family from harm without fear of retaliation by the state. When these rights are denied, the system perpetuates trauma instead of preventing it.​
We cannot treat trauma with trauma.
TOXIC STRESS
When a child experiences a traumatic event, their body instantly shifts into survival mode, leaving healing on the back burner. If peace and stability aren’t restored soon after, and the child cannot retreat to the comfort and connections they need to recover, that danger signal remains active and begins to influence how they move forward in the world, steering their growth in harmful directions.
When a child needs SECURITY,
We must not impose THREAT.
CHILD RE-VICTIMIZATION
Re-victimization is the repeated infliction of trauma following a prior victimization. It may stem from further abuse or from damaging responses to the original harm, and it deepens wounds that have not yet had the chance to heal. In failure-to-protect cases, state intervention replaces one crisis with a series of others, placing children into new conditions of danger and insecurity.
When failure-to-protect allegations are driven by stereotypes rather than substantiated danger, child welfare agencies replace due process with discrimination.