After two 5-year-old Indianapolis girls separately died from abuse in the last two years, Indiana Republican state Sen. Julie McGuire said lawmakers could not get basic answers from the state agency responsible for the safety of children.
Kinsleigh Welty had been known to the child welfare system before she was found, starving, in a closet in 2024, McGuire told Stateline. The girl died soon after. And Zara Arnold’s death last May raised questions on what state officials did about pleas from her mother to protect the child from her father, who had a documented history of violence.
McGuire said she called the Indiana Department of Child Services to ask what had happened, only to be told the agency could not share details because of state confidentiality law. So, McGuire sponsored a bill, which passed unanimously and became law in March, requiring the agency to promptly release to the public more information when child abuse or neglect results in a death or near fatality, including reports received about the abuse and what actions the department took.
The goal, she said, is to identify patterns that could prevent the next death.
“We have a billion dollars of taxpayer money for this agency, and we have no window into it as legislators who create the policies that DCS is supposed to enforce,” McGuire said. “The only way to fix things and to improve the system is to shine a light.”
Indiana is among several states that have enacted or considered laws this year to increase reporting and oversight of child neglect and abuse. Some of the new laws came after high-profile deaths or abuse cases, with lawmakers citing warning signs such as repeated visits from child services or complaints about unsafe family dynamics. The issue often draws support — even unanimously — across party lines.
Some of the new measures require the disclosure of more information to lawmakers and the public, to illuminate trends that might allow policymakers and social services workers to prevent future cases. Other measures require state agencies to initiate investigations faster or more thoroughly to stop harm.
Oklahoma enacted a law in May that requires school administrators who receive allegations of a student being abused by a school employee to report it to law enforcement within 24 hours. In April, Iowa enacted a law allowing courts to grant investigators access to children in alleged abuse cases even when parents refuse to cooperate. Lawmakers approved both measures without a single dissenting vote.
Also in April, Idaho enacted “Benji’s Law” to require the Department of Health and Welfare to investigate and verify any report alleging abuse and neglect by a caretaker of a high-risk newborn within 12 hours. The bill was named after an infant Benjamin, or “Benji,” who died in Nampa in December despite calls to the agency asking officials to check on him. Families had raised concerns about the baby’s parents, who had prior child abuse convictions and had their parental rights terminated for five other children, the Idaho Capital Sun reported.
AJ McWhorter, a spokesperson for the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, told Stateline that hotline staff will verify within the 12-hour timeframe whether a child under a year old is in a home with certain red flags. Those include whether a parent or guardian is on the central child abuse registry or the infant was a born with neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome.
McWhorter said the agency is confident it can meet the new requirements and will assess staffing needs as they emerge.
But Dr. Mical Raz, a professor of public health and policy at the University of Rochester, cautioned that while everybody wants to prevent child deaths, measures that encourage more and faster reporting and investigations don’t always have the desired effect.
“There’s really no evidence that more reporting and more investigations keeps families safe,” Raz said. “We should stop thinking about parents as the enemies to the children and start thinking about the family unit as a whole.”
Raz said one downside to pushing more reporting and investigations is the disproportionate oversurveillance of certain families, especially Black, brown and low-income families.
The National Coalition for Child Protection Reform notes that more than one-third of all children — and more than half of Black children — will experience an abuse or neglect investigation before adulthood. Critics say many of the conditions that prompt neglect investigations are simply manifestations of poverty.
High-profile cases
Other states also have introduced or enacted child protection measures this year after high-profile deaths.
In Arizona, lawmakers passed a bipartisan bill, which became law in April, aimed at improving communication between the Department of Child Safety and tribal nations after the death of Emily Pike, a 14-year-old San Carlos Apache girl who disappeared from a group home and was later found dead. Her killing remains unsolved.
In Ohio, a bipartisan group of lawmakers in February introduced a bill to create Kei’Mani’s Law, which would require schools to appoint child protection liaisons.
The measure was named after 13-year-old Kei’Mani Latigue, who was found dead in an abandoned Toledo house after being reported missing in March 2025. Tiara Kasten, her mother, said in a statement advocating for the bill’s passage, “The hurt of losing my daughter, the person who saved my life before her life ever began, will never truly cease. But today, I am using my pain to propel us forward as a society.”
Authorities alleged Latigue had been sexually assaulted and mutilated. Her father has been charged with aggravated murder, rape, kidnapping and other counts.
QuotationThe only way to fix things and to improve the system is to shine a light.
– Indiana Republican state Sen. Julie McGuire
In Louisiana, lawmakers introduced a bill this session that would expand and clarify how child abuse, neglect and child deaths are reported, after lawmakers said they were not notified about the starvation death of a 5-year-old.
In New Mexico, the state child welfare agency is under scrutiny and facing a lawsuit from the state’s attorney general, Democrat Raúl Torrez, over allegations it misused state confidentiality laws to hide systemic failures.
‘I could see me’
When North Carolina state Rep. Carla Cunningham, who is not affiliated with either party, read through the records about Dominique Moody — a 6-year-old who died in December 2025 after years of severe abuse and neglect — she viewed it through her experience as a nurse.
Cunningham told Stateline she found herself asking many questions she didn’t see answered in police or agency reports about Dominique’s death: Was Dominique verbal? Was she a special needs child? Were there signs that someone trained to recognize abuse or neglect should have caught earlier?
The case prompted Cunningham to introduce a bill bearing Dominique’s name that would create a child welfare case escalation team, expand training for social workers and require more review in high-risk cases with extensive Child Protective Services history.
Cunningham said the goal of the bill, which is currently in committee, is to help agencies and others involved with child welfare recognize “missed signs or patterns” that could prevent future deaths.
Dominique’s case has stayed with Cunningham personally, she said, because she too was raised by people other than her parents, moved from house to house and changed schools about 20 times before graduating.
“When this case came up, I didn’t sleep at night a couple of nights,” Cunningham said. “I could see me.”
A database called Lives Cut Short — a collaborative effort by the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute think tank and the University of North Carolina — compiled more than 4,000 incidents of children who have died from abuse or neglect between 2022 and 2026.Many of the cases, the researchers found, were not counted in state and local statistics.
The tool is public for families, journalists, policymakers and the public to understand patterns of these deaths across state lines. Naomi Schaefer Riley, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told Stateline she hopes lawmakers can find warning signs in the thousands of cases tracked in the database.
“People come to (this issue) in a very shocking kind of way,” Riley said, often after a particular child’s death affects their family, community or state. “But once the immediate grief settles, people begin asking harder questions like how can this be prevented?”
According to the database, only 11 states — Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Nevada, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin — post notifications about any child fatality, near fatality or other “egregious” incidents.
Cunningham said the point of her bill is not to shift blame to agencies such as the Division of Social Services — which she acknowledges is sifting through hundreds of mentally taxing cases regarding death and maltreatment — but about assisting these departments that have staffing challenges.
One of the more glaring red flags in Moody’s case, according to Cunningham, was that the Charlotte police department had gone to the apartment that Dominique was living in 59 times over four years.
“It’s not like we are pushing against the departments of DSS locally. We want to assist. We know the caseload,” she said. “We want to help any way that we can on the front, so we don’t have to be looking at numerous deaths.”
Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes NC Newsline, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
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