In The Future of Child Protection, Jane Waldfogel provides a well-reasoned, carefully balanced critique of the current child protection system in the United States and an incremental but still ambitious proposal for its reform. For Waldfogel, the future of child protection involves a "...differential response system in which CPS [child protection services], in partnership with other formal and informal resources in each community, responds to families on a case-by-case basis, using authoritative or voluntary intervention as appropriate"(p. 212). In place of the current "one size fits all" approach, Waldfogel argues that her reform proposal would have the capacity to deliver a "customized response" to every family because of its decentralized system of reporting, screening, investigation, and service delivery and its emphasis on service integration and collaboration with a range of formal and informal community partners. Moreover, Waldfogel claims that the proposed reform would not require additional funding for child protection or related services, thereby increasing its political viability.
It is hard to argue against a system that would treat all children and families in need of services according to their specific needs, in an integrated and consistent manner-especially when that system is purported to require no additional resources. Thus, the differential response system Waldfogel proposes is appealing in many ways. Yet, there are many challenges to successfully implementing such a system, and although Waldfogel recognizes several of them, I fear that she ultimately underestimates their scope. Waldfogel also fails to make a compelling case for why her proposed system-one that would intervene "more aggressively and authoritatively on the high risk cases, more helpfully and comprehensively with the lower-risk cases,