The Painful Truth: Children Die Everywhere - Even in Foster Care

This may be one of the hardest truths to speak out loud, but it’s one we must confront: children die no matter where they live. They die in the care of their parents, and they die in foster homes. They die from the same causes: unsafe sleep, drowning, untreated medical issues, and yes, even homicide. The belief that simply removing a child from their home guarantees safety is a dangerous lie. And that lie is doing real harm.

The Big Lie: That Removal Equals Protection

The foundation of our child welfare system rests on a dangerous assumption, that children are automatically safer just because they’ve been placed somewhere new. But the truth is, harm doesn’t disappear with a change of address. Children have died in foster care just like they have in their own homes. And the circumstances? Often strikingly similar.

But here’s the difference: when a child dies in their parent’s care, there’s no system protection. The story hits headlines, the blame comes swiftly, and the public outrage fuels the cycle of removals. But when a child dies in State custody, the response is different. The system protects itself. People cover their tracks. Investigations go quiet. It gets hidden under the cloak of confidentiality. That’s why we hear more about children dying at the hands of their parents, and far less about the children who die while in the “care” of the state. But the truth remains: tragedies occur both at home and within the custody of the State.

Foster and adoptive parents are not saviors. They are people from the same communities, carrying their own unresolved trauma, family dysfunction, and lapses in judgment. They struggle with the same stressors as birth parents: mental health challenges, financial strain, broken relationships. Yes, they go through training. But training doesn’t cancel out lived experience. It doesn’t erase dysfunction. It doesn’t guarantee safety.

We also forget: children are born with the tools to navigate the struggles within their own families. That’s where their resilience is rooted. Removing them from that context and placing them in a different kind of dysfunction, just with new faces and rules, doesn’t fix anything. It often deepens the trauma. It fractures identity. It tells a child that their story isn’t worth preserving.

Removal is not rescue. It’s a reshuffling of pain. And we must stop pretending it’s protection.

DCF Is Not Trained to Prevent Homicide

Let’s be clear: murder prevention is not a thing. Even law enforcement, the system specifically designed to deal with crime, isn’t expected to stop homicides before they happen. We don’t blame police for every murder because we understand a basic truth: human behavior is unpredictable.

And yet, we’ve built an entire child welfare system around a false reality, one that pretends DCF can somehow see the future and prevent every tragedy. When a child dies, the system is dragged into the spotlight, blamed for not doing enough, and expected to answer for the impossible. This is where the delusion sets in.

DCF investigators and case managers are not trained in homicide prevention. They don’t carry crystal balls. There is no tool that can tell us who will snap, when, or why. So why are we demanding clairvoyance from a system never designed for it?

We must come back to a place of truth. No one, not DCF, not the courts, not law enforcement, can prevent every act of violence. Building systems around that fantasy only ensures more harm, more fear-driven decisions, and more families torn apart in the name of false protection.

A System That Responds to Fear Instead of Truth

The child welfare system operates from a place of fear. When a tragedy happens, we rush to ask: Why didn’t someone do something? But too often, that “something” becomes the forced separation of families. In our effort to prevent physical death, we ignore the emotional, psychological, and spiritual deaths that follow removal. A child may be physically alive, but grieving, broken, and disconnected.

And what about safety? We’ve reduced it to a different address or a new caregiver, without asking what the child is truly safe from, or what they’re being robbed of? Because real safety isn’t just the absence of bruises. It’s the presence of love, identity, community, and support. It’s a stable, secure family, ideally, the one they were born into.

If we’re serious about protecting children, we must tell the truth: this system often trades one kind of harm for another. And sometimes, what we call “saving” a child is just another form of death.

Accountability, Not False Security

When a child dies, it is heartbreaking. We grieve. We search for answers. But we must stop pretending that we can predict and prevent every tragedy. Instead, we must focus on building a system that provides real support, not one that hides behind false promises of protection.

If a homicide occurs, we rely on the justice system to hold the perpetrator accountable. That is the best any society can do. Child protection is not exempt from that reality.

Let’s stop lying to ourselves. Moving a child doesn’t guarantee their safety. In fact, it often guarantees trauma. The real work is not in removing children. It’s in building up the families they come from.

Because here’s the painful truth: children die everywhere. But tearing families apart in the name of safety is not the solution. Telling the truth is.