Tennessee child deaths due to suspected abuse or neglect increased nearly 30% in 2023 • Tennessee Lookout

A three-year-old boy shot himself in the head after getting his hands on his father’s unsecured Ruger 9mm semi-automatic pistol.

A four-year-old girl was found dead in a garbage can.

And a three-month-old baby was found blue, motionless and alone on his first day at an unlicensed daycare where six babies had been abandoned by caregivers. He did not survive.

They are among 190 children whose deaths in the last year are being investigated by the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services for suspected abuse and neglect. That’s a nearly 30% increase from the previous year and the highest number of deaths due to child neglect and abuse in Tennessee in nearly a decade, according to a Lookout analysis of DCS data.

More than two-thirds of the children had come to the attention of DCS social workers within three years of their death. In some cases, DCS was in the process of investigating a family when a child died. In other cases, the children died after DCS had ended its work with the family and closed the case.

Eleven children were in DCS care at the time of her death, including a 16-year-old girl who ran away from a DCS facility before overdosing on heroin in a public park.

DCS is required by federal law and a 2012 court order to make case files on child deaths it investigates publicly available. These files document all of DCS’s interactions with the child and his or her family, as well as the agency’s final determinations as to whether the death was the result of abuse or neglect.

It may be years before the public can see these records. The agency’s review of the 2021 alleged abuse deaths is ongoing. The files on all but 19 of the 2023 child death cases have not yet been released.

Delays prevent children’s records from becoming publicly available

A DCS spokesman attributed the delay in investigating suspected abuse deaths to several factors:

DCS must wait until a Department of Child Services investigative team, comprised of local district attorneys, law enforcement officials and others, investigates a child’s death and considers criminal prosecution. That process can take months and sometimes years, Ashley Zarach, a DCS spokeswoman, said in response to emailed questions.

The agency is also experiencing delays in receiving autopsies, toxicology reports and medical records.

According to DCS, new laws were passed this year that allow for expedited autopsies of children who were known to DCS before their death. These laws will speed up the process.

When asked to explain the increase in the number of suspected child abuse deaths over the past year, Zarach said there “appears to be no causal relationship or statistical significance for an annual increase or decrease in deaths.”

“The number of deaths does not follow data trends when compared to other allegations of abuse/neglect,” Zarach said, noting that the number of child deaths has remained stable during the pandemic, even though the number of reports of child abuse has declined significantly.

She added that infant deaths due to unsafe sleep appear to be increasing and that an increase in fentanyl and accidental firearm deaths may also be partly to blame.

Zarach did not respond to a question about whether social workers faced disciplinary action for handling cases that ultimately involved children who died.

“Needles in a haystack”

The deaths of children already known to child welfare services have become a hot political issue in recent years, with advocates of increased removal of at-risk children from their families on one side and those of limiting the state’s power to destroy families on the other.

Naomi Schaefer Riley of the Lives Cut Short Project, which documents child abuse deaths nationwide, said the current emphasis on supporting family preservation “at all costs” is not enough to protect the most vulnerable children and may contribute to higher mortality rates from abuse and neglect.

“Maybe the pendulum is swinging too far in that direction,” Riley said.

Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, takes a different view.

Reports of an increase in the number of deaths of children already known to child protection agencies often lead government agencies to take more aggressive action in removing children from their families.

That would be a mistake, Wexler says, pointing out that reports of deaths from child abuse affect only a fraction of the children that aid organizations like DCS regularly deal with.

In the 2022-2023 fiscal year, for example, DCS in Tennessee conducted more than 66,000 child abuse investigations and received more than 100,000 reports through its hotline, according to the agency’s most recent annual report.

“These cases (child deaths) are like needles in a haystack. So what do we do when there is a spike? Report more children so the haystack gets bigger,” said Wexler, who warned against such “knee-jerk” reactions exposing even more children to the trauma of removal. DCS has resources to help families in need without taking a child away from them, including arranging drug counseling, parenting classes and referring families to other government services.

DCS data reviewed by Lookout shows that child deaths currently being investigated by DCS will surpass all other child deaths in Tennessee in 2023, increasing 6 percent in 2023, compared to a 29 percent increase in suspected child abuse deaths.

Black children were disproportionately represented, accounting for 39 percent of suspected abuse deaths last year, while African Americans under 18 make up 21 percent of all children in Tennessee.

Boys were also disproportionately represented among suspected deaths from abuse or neglect in 2023.

According to Zarach, the higher proportion of boys “seems to be a continuing trend.”

Boys are more likely to be born prematurely. According to some studies, they are also more likely to suffer sudden infant death syndrome. Boys are also more likely to be physically abused and accidentally shot.