[s0kr8s]

Having worked in a position where it was part of the job description to periodically report parents to CPS, my experience was that it was actually quite challenging to get CPS to take up a case, even when there was lots of evidence suggesting abuse was taking place. In general, CPS seemed to work very hard to prevent false positives, and concerned itself far less with false negatives.

At the time, I remember finding that frustrating, but in retrospect I think it was the right approach. Why? Because invalid reports are always going to vastly outnumber valid ones, in part because it is easy to be judgmental about someone else's parenting for a variety of prejudicial reasons, so "innocent until proven guilty" should be the default stance of any agency tasked with investigating such reports.

That is why stories about shaken baby syndrome are so galling, because the faux-science sets up a "guilty until proven innocent" scenario, which is definitely the wrong approach.