How do social workers decide to remove children from the home because of abuse or neglect?

Well, that was the question at yesterday's Legislative Oversight and Investigations Committee meeting in Frankfort.

Some state lawmakers raised concerns about new tools used by the Department for Community Based Services.

Our Emily Sisk explains in tonight's legislative update.

In Kentucky, nearly 46,000 youth were in the foster care system from 2021 to 2023.

55,000 children were being raised by a relative.

Kentucky's cabinet for Health and Family Services has implemented new risk assessment tools that can advise social workers on if children should be removed from the home.

But as the Commissioner for Community Based Services explained, sometimes workers override the tools recommendation.

Sometimes they are.

They're factors in a case that's never going to change.

So, if a individual has a prior CPS history, they're always going to have a prior CPS history.

The same thing if you have a prior, you know, a history of with, mental health, substance misuse, criminal record, etc., that's always going to raise your risk for that doesn't necessarily mean that there's a current safety threat or issue.

Commissioner Dennis said sometimes the risk assessment tool recommends services or support resources for families, rather than removing children from the home.

Senator Phillip Wheeler, who works as an attorney, said he hears ongoing complaints from those in the court system about how child removal cases are handled when it suddenly becomes a five alarm fire and it shows up in the court and they get the entire file on them.

It's, you know, this high with about 20 incidents in there that they said this should have been done two years ago.

Wheeler said he sees many instances where parents have newborn children soon after their previous children were removed due to abuse or neglect.

I mean, I would almost think from the time that those new children come into the world, a case file needs to be opened.

People like that.

Well, frankly, I don't even think they should be having children.

But secondly, I mean, there's no way that even a minor child is safe with people like that.

Is this tool being utilized in such a manner as to proactively defend these, these children that are either newborn or adolescents against these types of parents that are, you know, frankly, not much better than animals.

Safety is always front and center.

With everything that we do.

We are ongoing, continually reevaluating safety.

The commissioner said they take parents prior history into consideration when assessing safety for Kentucky edition.

I'm Emily Sisk.