In Kentucky, where I have worked alongside child welfare leadership on prevention planning and systems reform, the state investigated 55,283 of the 143,764 reports of abuse and neglect lodged in 2025. In only 16% of these investigated cases was a finding of maltreatment substantiated.
For the tens of thousands of families for whom no abuse or neglect is found, an investigation alone can still trigger trauma through intrusive inquiries, prolonged uncertainty and reputational damage.
Kentucky is not unique; this is the reality of child welfare systems nationwide. We have built expansive systems intended to protect children, predicated on broad public surveillance and mandatory reporting. It is to be expected that such a system will generate good-faith concerns that do not ultimately pan out. But when a system operating at this scale is granted extraordinary discretion without sufficient oversight, a fundamental question emerges: who ensures accountability?
At the state level, Kentucky’s Department for Community Based Services, housed within the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, wields enormous authority over families’ lives. Oversight mechanisms exist, but they are fragmented and constrained.
The agency’s Office of the Ombudsman is tasked with “investigating complaints about any Cabinet for Health and Family Services employee or program,” according to its website. But the office lacks access to all records and cannot fully investigate many complaints. The Office of the Inspector General licenses and regulates the state’s child welfare providers, including its residential care facilities. It can investigate these entities, but only at the request of the cabinet’s secretary or other top officials, who might not have a strong incentive to look into ugly incidents that will yield bad publicity.
The state Attorney General’s office provides another potential check, particularly through enforcement of the Open Records Act. But even this mechanism exposes the limits of accountability. When a state agency violates open records law, a citizen may appeal to the Attorney General, who can issue an opinion, but cannot compel compliance. If an agency ignores that ruling, the citizen’s only remaining option is to file a lawsuit against the state. For most families, that option is financially and practically inaccessible.
Recent reporting in Kentucky has underscored just how difficult it can be for citizens to obtain basic records about child welfare decisions, even in cases involving child fatalities. Transparency mechanisms technically exist, but they depend almost entirely on voluntary compliance. When agencies delay, deflect or withhold records, accountability collapses into a procedural maze with no meaningful enforcement.
The same is true regarding frontline workers operating within this structure, making decisions with profound consequences for families. Personnel evaluations of the workforce, and many internal reviews of performance, are exempt from public records laws, leaving families and the public unable to assess whether decision-making was appropriate or consistent. When oversight bodies cannot access records, initiate investigations or enforce corrective action, accountability becomes theoretical rather than real.
Families, meanwhile, experience life-altering interventions with little recourse when mistakes are made. Internal investigations often prioritize institutional risk management over systemic learning. Families are held to strict standards; agencies are not.
This is not simply a procedural problem. It is a structural one. A system designed to protect children cannot function ethically when it resists transparency and shields itself from scrutiny. When agencies face no meaningful consequences for error or misconduct, families become collateral damage.
I have spent years working on child welfare reform in Kentucky and elsewhere, serving in statewide coalitions, contributing to prevention strategies and collaborating with policymakers. I have also experienced the system personally, so I have seen from multiple angles how limited accountability truly is in practice. The same agencies tasked with protecting and helping families are often insulated from meaningful oversight when they fail.
This is a national issue. From California to Kentucky, the same patterns persist: investigations launched, sometimes on thin allegations, families destabilized by investigations that go nowhere, and oversight mechanisms unable, or unwilling, to intervene. The scope of child welfare involvement continues to expand, while accountability mechanisms lag far behind.
We cannot continue to accept a system where families are subjected to intrusive state power without transparency, recourse or meaningful review. Oversight bodies must be empowered to access records, initiate investigations and enforce corrective action. Agencies must be held to standards at least as rigorous as those imposed on the families they investigate.
Until child welfare systems are subject to real accountability, families will remain vulnerable, trust will continue to erode and the system will fail the very people it was created to protect.
