➡ From Child Welfare Information Gateway NJ:
US: The False Dichotomy of “Child Safety vs. Family Preservation” (Opinion)
Chronicle of Social Change – January 06, 2017
Safety and maltreatment are related but not entirely coterminous. It is true that the federal government uses maltreatment as its proxy indicator for child safety. But when child protective service agencies (CPS) initiate a response to a child maltreatment report, the threshold broadly applied for a safety intervention (removal or in-home safety plan) is immediate or imminent danger of serious harm, not just presence of maltreatment. In actual practice, the vast majority of confirmed maltreatment cases do not involve circumstances that justify the immediate removal of children.
https://chronicleofsocialchange.org/opinion/false-dichotomy-child-safety-vs-family-preservation/23782