Child deaths and critical injuries in Washington’s child welfare system hit a record high in 2025.
State lawmakers are looking for solutions, and Democrats and Republicans each have proposals. They would increase court oversight in certain child welfare cases, keep investigations open longer and encourage keeping children at home while requiring services. Lawmakers are also looking at adding money for caseworkers and other supports.
In 2025, 22 children enmeshed in child welfare died and 35 more nearly died, state officials told lawmakers last Wednesday. About half of these incidents involved opioids. Children ages 0 to 3 are most likely to be hurt. These cases cover deaths and injuries related to maltreatment where families have been involved in the child welfare system in the past year.
The total of 57 is an increase over 49, 50 and 43, respectively, in the past three years.
The preliminary numbers shared last week didn’t quite reach the doubling or tripling feared based on the figures early in 2025. State officials believe this could be due to declines in opioid overdoses over the summer.
Republicans blame a 2021 law called the Keeping Families Together Act for the rise in deaths and injuries. The law raised the standard for separating children from their parents, and aimed to keep them with other relatives instead of foster care. The goal was to stop poverty from being used as a reason to take kids away from their parents, and to avoid inflicting the trauma of being separated from family.
Lawmakers revamped the law in 2024, instructing courts to give “great weight” factoring in the presence of opioids when deciding whether to separate children from their parents. Removals ticked up.
Still, since the law was first passed, fewer children have been entering foster care than exiting.
Gov. Bob Ferguson’s proposed budget includes state funding for more caseworkers and improving the workload of existing staff. He also earmarked money to add slots to the Parent-Child Assistance Program to support mothers with substance use disorder and other work focused on addressing the risk of drugs to toddlers.
Vickie Ybarra, the assistant secretary for partnership, prevention and services at the Department of Children, Youth and Families, said the spending plan “included a set of interventions to help prevent critical incidents.”
“Programs that will help us better engage families with substance use disorder treatment and create home environments for young children that are more safe and connect families with services,” Ybarra said in a Senate committee meeting.
The Department of Children, Youth and Families has already taken some steps to address the increase in deaths and injuries.
The state now requires “safe child consults” for all child welfare cases involving opioid use and a child younger than 3. These reviews help determine whether officials will allow a child to go home or petition a judge for care elsewhere. Caseworkers on neglect and medically complex cases are also getting increased training. Officials have also hosted listening sessions with staff to help identify roadblocks to working with families with drug use issues.
The policy ideas
Legislative committees heard four policy proposals tackling the issue last week. None of them look to overhaul the Keeping Families Together Act.
Rep. Lillian Ortiz-Self, the sponsor of the Keeping Families Together Act, initially pitched ambitious legislation to tackle the safety issues. The bill’s myriad provisions would have, among other things, expanded access to legal counsel for at-risk mothers and provided nurses to support parents with open Child Protective Services investigations.
Much of what this measure envisioned will instead be handled through the budget process later in the legislative session, lawmakers said.
What’s left is House Bill 2660 to increase court oversight of Child Protective Services cases involving children under age 5 who are allowed to stay with their parents instead of being placed in foster care. It would allow judges to order parents to comply with conditions they deem necessary to maintain the child’s safety. Ortiz-Self is sponsoring the bill.
It’s focused on kids who aren’t yet going to school, where teachers or others might recognize signs of abuse or neglect.
Ortiz-Self has been firm in her opinion that her 2021 law shouldn’t be rolled back.
“We must address critical incidents that continue to occur, that have occurred before the law, during the law, after the law,” said Ortiz-Self, a Mukilteo Democrat.
“This just clarifies the policy that reasonable concern for those little ones is reason to get the courts to mandate certain conditions be met,” she said of her new bill.
The Department of Children, Youth and Families likes the legislation as it forces parents to participate in services. Refusing court-ordered services wouldn’t immediately mean a child is removed. The state would still have to convince a judge that was necessary.
Others have concerns about the bill’s constitutionality and fear it’ll keep children in potentially unsafe homes.
“Parents have important liberty interests at stake,” said Amelia Watson, with the Parents Representation Program at the state Office of Public Defense. “Allowing the court to order evaluations, examinations and services over a parent’s objection…would impact those fundamental liberty and privacy interests.”
Senate Bill 6319, meanwhile, looks to keep Child Protective Services cases open longer.
Currently, state caseworkers have to close investigations into allegations of abuse or neglect within 90 days, except in cases where a parent agrees to participate in services or police are investigating. After the inquiry, the state has to decide if the initial allegations are founded or not.
The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Claire Wilson, D-Auburn, directs DCYF to keep cases open beyond 90 days if they involve a child under age 4 and high-potency synthetic opioids, like fentanyl. This would start in 2027 if the bill is passed. Investigations couldn’t go beyond nine months.
The goal is to address harm children experience after an initial state investigation, said Wilson.
“What we’re trying to do is some kind of a slow release where families feel supported,” she said.
Watson worries this proposal “expands oversurveillance of parents” without access to legal counsel.
Kim Justice, director of public policy for Partners for Our Children, said keeping cases open could help with safety, leading to “stronger engagement and better follow through with services among parents.”
Dependencies and definitions
Senate Bill 5979 focuses on dependency petitions filed in court that don’t argue children should be removed from their parents, but that a court needs to order services for the family.
This bill calls for developing guidelines and training on these in-home dependencies as an option to support and supervise families without having to resort to putting kids in foster care. It follows similar recommendations from the Office of Family and Children’s Ombuds.
Justice argued it strikes an important middle ground.
“Our system is framed as a choice between two extremes, removing a child or closing the case with no further involvement,” she told lawmakers last week. “In reality, there’s a wide range of options in between. This bill addresses one of those responses.”
The Department of Children, Youth and Families argues the work envisioned in the bill is unnecessary because it already has a process to file for in-home dependencies.
State law defines a “dependent” child as one who has been abandoned, abused or neglected or “has no parent, guardian, or custodian capable of adequately caring for the child, such that the child is in circumstances which constitute a danger of substantial damage to the child’s psychological or physical development.”
“In situations where that exists, it is not always advisable to do an in-home dependency,” said Julie Watts, the agency’s deputy government affairs director.
House Bill 2511 looks to define “imminent physical harm,” the standard courts use to decide whether to remove kids from their home. Judges across the state are applying this standard inconsistently, Watts said.
The legislation would define the term as a situation where “there exists a substantial risk of serious harm to the child’s safety or well-being. This risk may arise from conditions in the home, the caregiving environment, or caregiver conduct.”
Opponents see this as undercutting the standard set in the Keeping Families Together Act.
Examples cited in the bill include physical abuse, emotional neglect, exposure to chronic unsafe conditions, failure to provide necessary supervision, caregiver impairment due to drug use and “other circumstances reasonably likely to cause significant developmental, psychological, or physical injury.”
Allison Rogers, who works at the Department of Children, Youth and Families in child welfare, said courts are interpreting imminent physical harm in the “strictest possible way.”
“We have the ability to create a policy that aligns the intent of the law with how it plays out in court,” she said in a House committee hearing. “Prioritizing reunification is possible, while also saying that children shouldn’t be in actively dangerous situations.”
The bill dealing with the “imminent physical harm” definition is the only one of the four bills on child welfare issues not scheduled for a committee vote this week.
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