This account of six families whose children were wrongly seized by child protection services vividly illustrates the constitutional balancing act where medicine, family interests, and child safety can clash. • Illustrates how the mantra “best interests of the child” masks errors, assumptions, and stereotypes that hide the real harm child protection policies are doing to children and families • Reveals how families are wrongly separated when overworked and underskilled caseworkers jump to conclusions of guilt, ignoring evidence of innocence • Focuses on the child protection system from the moment of intervention—starting with the child abuse hotline call that targets a specific child as a victim and his or her parents as suspects • Highlights the many decision points, attitudes, policies, and practices that operate to make even innocent parents vulnerable to having their children taken from them • Explains why basic due process principles ordered by federal and state courts would go a long way to help families, but cautions that just results depend on effective family defense counsel
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