Session Recap
CSG West Chair’s Forum
79th CSG West Annual Meeting
Salt Lake City, Utah
Introduction
Child welfare touches the work of every state legislature through its budgets, courts, schools and, most importantly, the families counting on lawmakers to get policy right. The 79th CSG West Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City included a Chair’s Forum aimed at identifying strategies to prevent child abuse and neglect. The session, which was facilitated by CSG West Chair Utah Senator Todd Weiler, was developed in partnership with Casey Family Programs, the nation’s largest operating foundation focused on safely reducing the need for foster care while improving the safety and well-being of children.
Senator Weiler opened the session by focusing on a central tension in the field: keeping children safely at home whenever possible and, when that isn’t possible, ensuring they reach permanency quickly and with kin.
Christine Calpin, Managing Director of Public Policy at Casey Family Programs, framed the discussion with national data on the child protection system, followed by a moderated panel featuring Katie Ptak, Director of the Arizona Department of Child Safety; Oregon Representative Anna Scharf; and David Litvack, Deputy Commissioner at the Utah Department of Health and Human Services. Bringing together an agency administrator, a state legislator, and a health and human services official, the panel provided three vantage points on the same set of pressures facing Western states.
Key Takeaways for Policymakers
1. The reporting funnel shows a system built to investigate far more families than it ultimately serves
Christine Calpin presented national figures showing that of the 7.8 million children referred to Child Protective Services in 2022, only about 18 percent of investigated reports were substantiated, while roughly 145,000 children—a small fraction of the total—were placed in foster care. Director Ptak and Deputy Commissioner Litvack cited comparable state-level numbers: Arizona substantiates about 10 percent of its 40,000 annual investigations, while Utah substantiated roughly 8,600 of 24,000 investigations opened from 51,000 reports in fiscal year 2025. Managing Director Calpin noted that teachers generate the largest share of reports nationally but have the lowest substantiation rate, while pediatricians have a much higher rate. These disparities, panelists argued, point toward the need for “differential response” options short of a full CPS investigation.
2. States are shifting from removal-first responses toward family preservation and kinship care
Panelists described a broad, decades-long push to rely less on removal and congregate care and more on keeping children safely with family, defined expansively to include relatives, kin, and other trusted adults. Arizona’s foster care population fell from about 19,000 children in 2015 to roughly 7,000 today, a 60 percent reduction the agency tracks against safety metrics to ensure the decline reflects better assessment of and responses to families’ challenges rather than a numbers target. Utah has piloted Family Action Meetings (FAM), which bring a family and its formal and informal support network together as soon as an allegation is substantiated to identify what’s needed to keep a child home. Oregon Representative Scharf described a policy shift that, in certain circumstances, lets a non-kin foster family retain priority if a reunification attempt fails, intended to reduce the number of times a child is moved between placements.
3. Frontline workforce pay and support directly shape system outcomes
Utah’s entry-level caseworkers earn roughly $22 an hour. Deputy Commissioner Litvack explained that a pay increase secured with the Utah Legislature several years ago noticeably improved retention. Director Ptak added that Arizona’s staff surveys also point to the weight of the job itself, prompting the agency to invest in psychological safety, shadowing and training so caseworkers feel supported in difficult decisions. Both panelists noted that how legislators and the public talk about child welfare agencies affects the agencies’ ability to recruit and retain staff.4. A growing share of cases involve behavioral health needs rather than abuse or neglect, straining limited placement capacity
4. A growing share of cases involve behavioral health needs rather than abuse or neglect, straining limited placement capacity
Deputy Commissioner Litvack and Director Ptak both described rising numbers of “dependency” cases, often teenagers, frequently post-adoptive youth, whose families feel unable to manage escalating behavioral health needs. States have closed group homes and treatment facilities in recent years even as this population grows. Director Ptak explained that once a state becomes a child’s legal guardian, it generally cannot place that child in an out-of-state facility, even when specialized care is unavailable in-state. An exception applies to children covered under the Indian Child Welfare Act.5. Cross-system partnerships, community organizations and legislative oversight bodies extend the reach of a state’s child welfare policy.
5. Cross-system partnerships and legislative oversight can extend the reach of state child welfare policy
Arizona’s extended foster care program, which runs to age 21 with a coaching model, stipends and free in-state tuition, was cited as a model for softening the “cliff” youth face at 18. Deputy Commissioner Litvack also pointed to Utah’s Child Welfare Legislative Oversight Panel, which reviews fatalities and agency performance on a recurring basis, as an example of structured accountability between the agency and the Legislature. A Department of Defense liaison shared that most military families live outside military installations and relocate frequently. To better address child welfare concerns, 38 states have adopted policies requiring cross-reporting of abuse allegations involving military families to the nearest military installation. Among Western states, Utah, New Mexico and Nevada have not adopted such policies.
Looking Ahead
Panelists pointed to several unresolved questions and emerging efforts worth continued attention. Oregon Representative Scharf highlighted Arkansas’s differential response model, which she learned about at a 2025 Casey Family Programs national convening of state legislators, as a framework other states might study as they build alternatives to full CPS investigations. Several panelists also emphasized the continued need to bring community-based prevention resources—including parenting support, crisis nurseries, and family resource centers—closer to the system’s “front door,” potentially helping families address challenges before CPS involvement becomes necessary.
Cross-reporting policy for military-connected families remains unresolved in three Western states, and the Department of Defense liaison indicated that outreach will continue to close that gap. Panelists also flagged open policy questions around anonymous versus confidential reporting, including how to weigh concerns about false or weaponized reports against evidence that anonymous reports are not disproportionately unsubstantiated. States are also grappling with how to expand behavioral health placement capacity for the growing population of high-acuity youth without relying on out-of-state facilities. Arizona noted an ongoing effort to close a coverage “donut hole” in its extended-services eligibility for youth who enter foster care later in adolescence.
Final Reflection
What emerged from the panel was less a single fix than a shared recognition that child welfare systems nationwide were built to react to crises and are only now being retooled to intervene earlier. Senator Weiler noted at the outset that these are complex issues where good policy, grounded in real research and data, can make a measurable difference in children’s lives—a point the discussion reinforced.