When Home is the Danger

Texas Public Radio spent more than a year analyzing more than 1,200 deaths from abuse and neglect between 2018 and 2023. The project, funded by the Pulitzer Center, brings stories of children who died when the state of Texas failed to intervene. TPR Accountability reporter Paul Flahive uncovered a child welfare system so intent on reducing its contact with troubled families that children have routinely been left with violent, unstable, drug-abusing parents.

Despite rising deaths, Texas limited safety services and enshrined laws that made it harder to remove a child.

Hundreds of children die in Texas each year from abuse and neglect. The state has employed several policies and laws intended to reduce the number of kids entering the system — at times with deadly results. But rather than fix the problem to keep children safe, the state is changing the guidelines. A Texas Public Radio special investigation shines a light on preventable deaths of children in Texas.

Texas keeps public in the dark on its agencies actions or inactions in child abuse and neglect deaths

Despite two child welfare investigations and child abandonment charges, Hardiquinn Hill was allowed to stay with her abusers and died.

Texas reports drop in child abuse and neglect deaths but the numbers don’t tell the whole story.

TPR catalogued the number of deaths and built an interactive website.