Opinion: These Connecticut children are counting on us

Hartford Courant – Tuesday, January 27, 2026
By Sarah Healy Eagan

Sarah Healy Eagan is executive director of the Center for Children’s Advocacy.

Last summer two audits emerged, one state, one federal, each with something urgent to tell us about our state’s child welfare system.

The first warning came from the Connecticut Auditors of Public Accounts, reporting that there were more than 3,000 incidents of children in Department of Children and Families custody going “missing from care” over a 2-year period, most missing for days at a time. The auditors concluded, and DCF agreed, that more work is needed to ensure these children have access to the care and treatment they require.

The second audit came from the federal government finding that Connecticut failed to meet (often by a large margin) any of the safety, permanency, or wellbeing needs of children involved with DCF. So what does all of this mean for children?

While there are certainly success stories for children and families, celebrating reunification or adoption, we must be clear eyed that we still have mountains to move for children entirely dependent on the state for their survival and wellbeing: Because of our state’s foster care crisis, children pack up their belongings multiple times, and cross the threshold to yet another caregiver, inevitably wondering what must be wrong with them that they are not wanted and cannot “make it” in a family.

After over 20 years in the child welfare business, please believe me that almost all children internalize their family’s or the state’s struggle to care for them as something being wrong with them. “I am in DCF care because I couldn’t behave,” one boy told me after six years in foster care had not resulted in his finding “permanency.” “Tell the judge that if he sends me home, I will do all the chores and everything will be different,” another child, 12 years old, pleaded. “I’ll be different.”

Too many children get stuck in hospitals, shelters, and other emergency placements, or frankly just run from people they know to people they kind of know.

“We just have no place to put him,” a local DCF supervisor told one of CCA’s lawyers just this week, referencing the lack of foster homes for a 17-year-old boy the court had just ordered the state to take custody of. “We don’t even have a shelter bed for him.” What this means is that the child remains in the troubled home environment that the court just directed he be removed from.

To be fair, the boy had made it clear he wouldn’t come back into DCF care if he has to live in a shelter.

A homeless provider reached out to CCA a week before that to report that another teen who had run away from a foster home tried to go back after a few days on the run, only to find the family gone and the home dark. Desperate, he called around for help. The boy was told he had to go to the hospital and that DCF had no placement for him that night. A 10-year-old child CCA represents is sitting in a hospital once again, because after months of waiting for a foster home, she struggled to feel safe there.

Families and DCF social workers are desperate to find services that will support caregivers and children. We’ve almost become numb to the waiting lists and holes in our system, long documented, particularly for children with disabilities. “The system is corrupt,” one father told me. “I called seven places looking for help for my son, and no one helped us. We can’t live like this anymore.”

A community provider reported just this past week to a somewhat shocked meeting audience that almost 20 percent of the children brought to their “urgent crisis center,” designed to be an alternative to the ED, are children under the age of 5.

Safety concerns for children are on the rise. A DCF administrator reported to the DCF Statewide Advisory Committee this month a 13% increase in “critical incidents” reported to DCF involving infants and toddlers. Critical incidents are fatalities, near fatalities and other serious injuries suspicious of abuse/neglect.

I don’t think the conversation moving us forward can be “what is wrong at DCF,” or “why is DCF failing,” or “how is DCF going to fix it.” They’d love to fix it. But with some of the gravest workforce challenges maybe ever, rising strain and anxiety in families, a still unresolved children’s behavioral health crisis, and a statewide system of services that has long since strained past the breaking point due to rising need and lack of investment, it will be hard to turn the tide without significant collective action. Better to ask: “What are we going to do about this?”

Recommendations for next steps:

Increase support for foster parents. Connecticut has abysmal foster care reimbursement rates. Some of the worst in the country compared to other high median income states. Immediately fix this. The best recruiters for new foster parents are current foster parents. If we leave them in the lurch, nickel and diming them, or not supporting them, they will tell their friends and neighbors, “whatever you do, don’t do this,” or as one foster mom recently told me: “I don’t know how anyone does this twice.”

Strengthen the DCF contracted system of care and increase Medicaid rates. Several line items in DCF’s budget have barely budged over the last several years, and overall DCF’s budget has decreased by over $100 million dollars in the last decade plus, all the while DCF still opens more than 30,000 abuse/neglect cases a year. Concurrently, the state must address the Medicaid funding crisis. State taskforces must ensure that the state can comply with legal entitlements to services. Noncompliance in our neighbor to the north (Massachusetts) was addressed by a years-long class action lawsuit.

Invest in legal representation for children. Names I hope we never forget: Matthew Tirado, Liam Rivera, Mimi Torres, Alex Medina. These children, all of whom died horrific and preventable deaths, were all represented by state appointed lawyers in the juvenile court. We must strengthen this system so that going forward all children have access to the high quality legal representation they are entitled to under the law.

Strengthen the DCF Statewide Advisory Committee. Hold ourselves accountable. State and federal law require Connecticut to have a robust citizen review panel that examines how well we help the children whose stories this essay recounts. In Connecticut, this body is the DCF State Advisory Committee. We must continue to strengthen the SAC’s ability to review the safety, permanency, and wellbeing of children dependent on the state. Add legislative members to the SAC, use federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment dollars to add independent staffing to support meaningful review and public reporting on what is needed to support our kids. Take action on the SAC’s annual recommendations.

Ensure no youth exits state custody alone. For the 1,000 plus teenagers still dependent on DCF because they have never found permanency? Know that less than half of them have a high school diploma by age 18, and we currently have no reports on what happens to these youth when they leave state care, voluntarily or involuntarily. Of the 400 youth age 18 to 21 that died for preventable reasons (suicide and overdose being the leading causes of their death) in a recent 4-year period studied by the Office of the Child Advocate, almost half had been involved with DCF, and 60 of these young people had been in foster care.

Well, the state is the parent for these youth. We must do everything in our power to ensure that these youth do not exit state custody to homelessness, institutionalization, incarceration, or death. The legislature should invest in housing, case management, and learning opportunities specifically for high need older youth; require regular reporting across state agencies (DMHAS, DDS, CSDE, DOH) serving these youth on educational completion, housing stability, and exit outcomes. Prohibit the discharge of any youth to homelessness.

Create additional crisis beds for youth who are homeless or at risk of homelessness, whether they are involved directly with DCF at the moment or not, as the state only has a handful of beds in Fairfield County and nowhere else.

The children don’t want us to blame and hand wring, they want us to fix it. Let’s get it done. These children are counting on us.

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