Is child abuse overreported?

Every year, child protective services agencies across the country receive millions of reports claiming that a child may be a victim of abuse or neglect. Roughly half of these reports are screened in for investigation.¹

Of the reports investigated, only a fraction find that a child is actually a victim of abuse or neglect.² The disparity between children reportedly abused or neglected and those who are ultimately found to be victims is enormous.

For 2022, the most recent year with available data, CPS agencies nationwide received a national estimate of 4,276,000 total referrals, involving an estimated 7,530,000 children. Of these referrals, approximately 602,466 children or 8% were determined to be victims of abuse or neglect.³

This means about 92% of children reported as being suspected victims of abuse or neglect were determined by CPS not to be.

While the numbers vary slightly by state, the overall conclusion is the same: the vast majority of children reported are not victims of child abuse or neglect.

When so many families are being unnecessarily or falsely reported, Heritage Defense is here to defend our member families who may be groundlessly reported for child abuse.

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Note on calculations:

These numbers are based on national child abuse statistics published annually in the federal Children’s Bureau’s report, Child Maltreatment 2022.⁴ While the total number of children involved in a report is not published, the Children’s Bureau has calculated the average number of children in a report based on the number of children in a single investigation. Their working number for 2022, the most recent year, is 1.8⁵ (note that what are colloquially known as “reports” are called referrals by the Children’s Bureau). 

To estimate the number of children reported, we multiplied the number of reports by 1.8 in every state.⁶ We then divided the known number of child victims by the estimated number of reported children to find the per state percentages.

¹  https://heritagedefense.org/percentage-of-cps-referrals-screened-in/

² https://heritagedefense.org/is-cps-investigating-innocent-families/

³ Child Maltreatment at 32. Table 3–2 Children Who Received an Investigation or Alternative Response by Disposition, 2022. 602,466 is the sum of the national total of substantiated and indicated reports. Note that all of these numbers are based on a duplicate count, meaning that children involved in more than one referral are counted multiple times. This ensures an apples-to-apples comparison.

⁴ U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Administration on Children, Youth and Families, Children’s Bureau. (2024). Child Maltreatment 2022. Available from https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/documents/cb/cm2022.pdf.

⁵ Child Maltreatment, at p. 7, n. 4. “Dividing the number of children with dispositions (3,732,871, from table 3–2) by the number of screened-in referrals (2,119,706, from table 2–1) results in the average number of children included in a screened-in referral (1.8, displayed as rounded).”

⁶ The Children’s Bureau did the same thing in estimating the total number of children in referrals. See Child Maltreatment at p. 7, n. 5. “The average number of children included in a screened-in referral (1.8) multiplied by the national estimate of total referrals (4,276,000, from exhibit 2–C) results in an estimated 7,530,000 (rounded) children included in total referrals.”