The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "Child Protective Services (CPS)" ...
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Unprotected: An Investigation o Sacramento County's Child Protective Services
A dozen years after the 1996 torture-death of one boy triggered major reforms within Sacramento County's Child Protective Services, -- and resulted in a quadrupling of the agency's budget and doubling of its staff -- many of the same problems persist in 2008. The Sacramento Bee found that, despite the massive increase in resources, numerous children continue to be injured or killed who had prior involvement with Sacramento's CPS. Among the problems detailed by The Bee: inadequate supervision and training, sloppy investigations, poor evaluation of children's risk, lack of accountability for serious mistakes. In its follow-up stories, which prompted a grand jury investigation, The Bee used a new state law related to child deaths to push CPS to release case files and found it had illegally altered the records of one boy who died in their care.
Tags: child protective services; county government; torture; child welfare; government agency; government accountablity; child services
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CPS Worker Safety
KVOA found that Tucson's Child Protection Services employees were being threatened by parents, guardians and family members.
Tags: child protection service; employee; safety; surveillances; security; state government; FOIA
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State of Denial
Arizona Child Protection Services is the state agency charged with protecting abused and neglected children. Until a new law took affect in 2005, CPS workers were not required to have background checks. A number of CPS caseworkers had criminal backgrounds and couldn't pass the checks. Unsure what to do, CPS didn't fire those workers and the situation remains.
Tags: Child Protection Services; criminal backgrounds; government workers; background checks; child abuse; neglect; Arizona Open Records Law
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Children of a Lesser God
"It was a modern day horror story: a little girl hidden away in rat-infested squalor for most of her life. When the authorities' took her away from her mother and grandmother, the nine-year-old had never been to school or played outside and could only make squeaking noises. Now dedicated social wokers, academics, and foster parents are trying to undo years of unimaginable neglect.
Tags: child abuse; foster care; social work; neglect; Child Protective Services (CPS); Austin's Children's Center; Kristene Blackstone; Rosedale; mainstreaming; mute; speech pathology
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The Once and Future Mom
A mother in Phoenix loses custody of her two daughters while on the verge of eviction and suffering from dysthymia, a mood disorder. Little was done to help reunite the biological family, and parental rights were severed based on the recommendation of CPS caseworkers. New incentives (up to $6,000 per child) in the 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) pave the way for children to move from foster care into permanent homes. However, this case was overturned on appeal, largely because CPS failed to make "reasonable efforts" to reunite the family.
Tags: Children's Protection Services (CPS); foster care; child care; dysthmia
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Protect the Children
Despite the risks and demands of the job, Children's Protective Services. CPS caseworkers are paid so little that only a few last more than a couple of years. In Texas, CPS workers have twice as many cases as the national average (12). Feldman shows what an average day is like for two caseworkers in the Houston area.
Tags: CPS; Child Protection Services; child welfare; foster children
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Fostering Sexual Abuse
The Phoenix New Times' investigation of Arizona's foster care system revealed that the state "often fails to monitor the welfare of children it has placed in foster homes and has frequently put kids in dangerous situations, including placing them in homes with a history of abuse."
Tags: Arizona Department of Economic Security DES Child Protective Services CPS
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King County's Foster Care Crisis
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer investigates King County's "critical shortage" of foster homes and "its impact on foster children." The investigation found that the county has seen an almost "30 percent drop in the number of foster homes over the last five years.... As needs grow and the number of available homes drops sharply, the state's stopgap measures leave abused children at risk of being abused all over again."
Tags: Child Protective Services CPS child-welfare youths homeless shelters juvenile detention
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No One Knows What Could Be Happening to Those Kids
Texas Monthly reports that for the overworked, underpaid, and inexperienced investigators of Child Protective Services, every day brings another case of abuse, neglect, and another, and another. The story tells of eight months in the life of Texas' child care crisis. When Governor George W. Bush proposed earlier this year to allocate funds to hire 380 more CPS caseworkers, you might have thought that something was finally being done to fight child abuse in Texas. What no one said, however, was that the new caseworkers would have no noticeable effect whatsoever on the safety of the state's children. The brutal truth about abuse in neglect in Texas is that it's escalating out of control, and recent front-page headlines only tell a small part of the story.
Tags: Child abuse; governmental agencies; CPS; Child Protective Services
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What happens when adults kill kids?
In the past five years, half of the people convicted of killing a child in Arizona were sentenced to fewer than 10 years in prison -- about as much prison time as one would get for armed robbery. The Arizona Republic profiles dozens of the young victims and the abuse surrounding their deaths.
Tags: murder; children; sentencing; Child Protective Services; CPS