In November 2007, a Georgia state senator sat down and put something unusual on paper.
It was not a campaign speech. It was not a piece of legislation. It was not a court filing. It was a seven page report from the legislative office of Senator Nancy Schaefer, who represented Georgia’s 50th District.
The title was blunt:
“The Corrupt Business of Child Protective Services.”
The report was dated November 16, 2007, and later updated on September 25, 2008. Nearly two decades later, the document remains a striking record of the concerns Schaefer said had been brought to her by parents, grandparents and families dealing with child protective services.
Schaefer did not begin her report with a discussion of policy. She began with a grandmother.
According to Schaefer, her introduction to child protective services cases came when a grandmother from a neighboring state contacted her about two granddaughters who had been removed from their mother. Schaefer wrote that the young mother had been told that if she wanted to see her children again, she should sign a document giving them up. Frightened and young, the mother did.
The children were placed in foster care in another county, and the grandmother began what Schaefer described as an exhausting effort to get her granddaughters back. The case eventually made its way into court, where Schaefer described allegations involving the foster home and a series of decisions concerning where the children should live. Ultimately, the girls were sent to California with their father, according to the report.
That case, Schaefer wrote, was only the beginning.
As more parents and grandparents contacted her, she said she began hearing stories from across Georgia and eventually from families in other states. She described what she characterized as troubling conduct by people involved in the child welfare process, including caseworkers, investigators, attorneys, judges, therapists and others.
Then she described a meeting that seems to have changed the scale of what she was seeing.
In one Georgia county, Schaefer arranged for 37 families to meet and speak openly about their experiences with the Department of Family and Children Services. She wrote that parents and grandparents cried as they told their stories. Some, she said, had not seen their children in years.
The image is difficult to miss: dozens of families gathered in one place, carrying stories that had apparently been lived privately for months or years, finally sitting in a room where they could speak about what had happened to them.
Schaefer’s conclusions were severe.
She wrote that although some children unquestionably need to be removed from dangerous situations, she believed the broader child protective services system had become deeply dysfunctional. She described what she believed was a lack of responsibility and accountability and argued that families could become trapped in a process from which they had little ability to escape.
Among the concerns she raised was the treatment of families with limited financial resources. Schaefer argued that poor parents could be particularly vulnerable because they might not have the money necessary to hire attorneys and challenge the system. She emphasized that poverty, in her view, did not make someone an unfit parent or mean that a child should automatically be separated from the family.
She also criticized the requirements placed on parents after their children were removed. Her report described parents being required to complete parenting classes, anger management, counseling, therapy and other programs, sometimes at their own expense, while simultaneously working and trying to maintain contact with their children.
Schaefer argued that the process could continue for months or even years and that the emotional consequences could be devastating for both parents and children. These were her observations and allegations based on the cases she said she had encountered; the report does not independently establish every claim it makes.
Then the report moved into one of its most controversial areas: money.
Schaefer questioned the financial incentives surrounding children in foster care and adoption. She discussed federal adoption incentive payments and alleged that financial structures could encourage states and local communities to increase adoptions. She cited adoption incentive amounts and argued that the system had developed financial interests connected to children remaining in state custody and ultimately being adopted.
Those claims are among the strongest allegations in the report and should be read as Schaefer’s claims and interpretation of the child welfare funding system at the time, rather than as established findings contained within the document.
But her criticism did not stop with money.
She questioned the secrecy surrounding child welfare and juvenile court proceedings. She argued that confidentiality could make it difficult for families and the public to examine decisions made by the system. She called for greater transparency and specifically advocated for open records and increased court observation.
Her recommendations were extensive.
Schaefer called for independent audits of child protective services agencies and a federal congressional hearing. She called for changes to financial incentives, clearer communication of parental rights and stronger requirements to search for relatives who might be able to care for children when permanent removal became necessary. She also advocated for greater openness in family court and additional protections surrounding the removal of children from their parents.
And then, near the end of the report, the policy discussion became deeply personal.
Schaefer wrote about the families she had encountered as “exhausted” and “terrified.” She described parents, grandparents and children who, in her view, had been beaten down by the system. She questioned whether reform was even possible and ended by arguing that children and families deserved better.
Whatever one thinks of Schaefer’s conclusions, there is something significant about the document itself.
An elected state senator was receiving complaints from families, arranging meetings where dozens of them could speak, documenting what she said she was hearing and then putting her concerns into a public report under her own name.
The report is not a neutral academic study. It is not an independent audit. It is not a court finding.
It is the record of what Nancy Schaefer said she saw, what families told her, what she believed those experiences meant and what she wanted government to do about them.
And that distinction matters.
Because nearly twenty years later, the report can be read for what it actually is without either dismissing it or accepting every allegation as proven fact.
It is a historical document.
A snapshot of the concerns being raised about child protective services by one state legislator in 2007 and 2008.
And perhaps the most haunting part is that the report did not begin with a statistic. It began with a grandmother calling for help. A mother who wanted her children. And a state senator who decided to listen.
