New Jersey spent more than two decades rebuilding a child welfare system once described as dysfunctional, eventually making enough progress to escape federal court oversight and rank among the nation’s better-performing states on several measures of child safety.
Then Gov. Rebecca ‘Mikie’ Sherrill proposed cutting state funding for the agency responsible for protecting those gains.
Sherrill’s fiscal 2027 budget called for reducing state appropriations to the Department of Children and Families by $28.8 million, or 1.9%, from the previous fiscal year. Across all funding sources, the proposed reduction was $26 million, or 1.1%, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services.
The proposal raised a larger question for policymakers: After years of costly reforms transformed a child protection system that had been subject to federal intervention, how much can New Jersey reduce spending without jeopardizing the progress that allowed it to emerge from court supervision?
The answer is complicated.
The Sherrill administration did not propose across-the-board reductions in child protection services. Some programs would receive additional money; federal funding for the Division of Child Protection and Permanency was expected to increase, and part of the overall departmental decline reflected programs being reduced, eliminated, or moved elsewhere.
Lawmakers also subsequently increased funding above the Blue Dog Democratic Governor’s original proposal before she signed the final $60.7 billion state budget June 30.
Still, the governor’s original proposal marked a change in direction for an agency whose leaders have repeatedly credited sustained investment, manageable caseloads and bipartisan political support with helping rescue New Jersey’s child welfare system.
A system once in crisis
The transformation began with a system that state officials themselves have described in stark terms.
A federal class-action lawsuit filed in 1999 alleged systemic failures to protect children in New Jersey’s custody from abuse and neglect and to provide legally required services. A settlement reached in 2003 resulted in federal court supervision and monitoring of the state’s child welfare system.
Christine Norbut Beyer, then commissioner of the Department of Children and Families, told lawmakers in 2025 that when she joined the former Division of Youth and Family Services in 2003, the agency was “dysfunctional and in disarray.”
Individual caseworkers sometimes carried caseloads of 100 children or more, she said.
Over the next two decades, New Jersey reorganized its child welfare bureaucracy, increased staffing, reduced caseloads, expanded prevention programs and changed how children and families were handled.
By 2022, the state and attorneys representing the children in the federal litigation agreed that New Jersey had made sufficient progress to begin ending federal supervision.
Attorneys representing children in the historic federal class-action lawsuit Charlie and Nadine H. v. Murphy agreed that New Jersey successfully transformed its child welfare system, leading to the formal termination of federal court oversight after two decades of reform.
The exit agreement recognized successful performance on 55 measures and benchmarks. Marcia Robinson Lowry, the attorney who brought the original lawsuit, said at the time that New Jersey had made “enormous progress” reforming the system.
The federal case was dismissed in 2023, followed by a transition from federal monitoring to a state oversight system. By March 2024, New Jersey had completed its exit from more than two decades of federal oversight.
From dysfunction to national leader
The results were measurable.
New Jersey officials reported in 2022 that the state had the nation’s lowest rate of children being placed outside their homes — 1.4 children per 1,000, compared with 3.4 nationally — and the fourth-lowest maltreatment rate, 2.6 per 1,000 children compared with 8.9 nationally.
New Jersey also ranked seventh among states for minimizing the number of different placements experienced by children in foster care.
By 2024, state officials said New Jersey continued to have the nation’s lowest rate of family separation and one of its lowest rates of child maltreatment and repeat maltreatment. More children who could not safely remain at home were being placed with relatives and family friends rather than unfamiliar foster families.
The first annual state performance report issued after federal supervision ended said New Jersey had met or exceeded most requirements of the federal settlement and was regarded as having one of the better child welfare systems in the country.
The reforms were accompanied by safeguards intended to prevent the system from slipping backward.
State law imposed a maximum average daily caseload of 15 cases per child protection caseworker. If the department exceeds that limit for two consecutive months, a corrective action process is triggered.
The state also created an independent monitoring mechanism through the Staffing and Oversight Review Subcommittee of the New Jersey Task Force on Child Abuse and Neglect. It is required to examine staffing, outcomes and other performance measures and report annually to the governor, Legislature and public.
Those safeguards reflect a central lesson of the federal intervention: Protecting vulnerable children depends not merely on having rules and procedures but on maintaining enough trained people and resources to carry them out.
Sherrill proposes reductions
Against that history, Sherrill’s first proposed budget called for reducing DCF’s state appropriation by $28.8 million.
The proposed reduction was not concentrated entirely on frontline child protection.
The governor recommended increasing funding for the statewide Family Connects NJ newborn home-visitation program by $12.8 million, bringing it to $48.6 million as the program expanded statewide.
She also proposed a $6.6 million increase for contracted services provided through the Children’s System of Care.
At the same time, the proposal called for an $11.4 million net reduction in contracted social services administered by the Division of Child Protection and Permanency, the agency directly responsible for investigating child abuse and neglect and protecting children who cannot safely remain at home.
The largest component was an $11.9 million reduction in the Subsidized Adoption program.
DCF attributed the broader reduction partly to its strategy of reducing family separations and shifting resources toward prevention and services intended to help families before they become involved with the child protection system.
Federal funding offered another offset.
CP&P expected to receive an additional $12 million in federal money in fiscal 2027 after the federal government approved New Jersey’s plan under the Family First Prevention Services Act.
The law allows federal reimbursement for certain services designed to prevent children from entering foster care.
Another $10 million reduction reflected a restructuring rather than simply eliminating services.
Sherrill proposed ending the $43 million New Jersey Statewide Student Support Services program within DCF and replacing it with a $33 million school-based initiative administered through the Department of Education.
The proposal also would have eliminated an additional $2.5 million lawmakers had provided in fiscal 2026 for the Child Collaborative Mental Health Care Pilot Program, reducing that program from $12.8 million to $10.3 million.
Those details make it inaccurate to characterize every dollar of the proposed $28.8 million state reduction as money taken directly from investigators or caseworkers.
But they also mean the administration proposed spending less state money overall on DCF at a time when New Jersey was assuming full responsibility for maintaining reforms once enforced through federal litigation.
Success does not mean the danger has disappeared
Leaving federal oversight did not mean New Jersey had solved child abuse or eliminated failures within the system.
The federal lawsuit itself ended because the state demonstrated sustained compliance with agreed reforms — not because every endangered child would henceforth be identified or every tragedy prevented.
State lawmakers recognized that distinction when they created the post-federal monitoring system.
When legislation establishing those safeguards was enacted, officials emphasized the importance of maintaining manageable caseloads and independent review after the federal court was gone.
The statutory 15-case limit was intended to prevent a return to the overwhelming workloads that once left employees responsible for scores of children simultaneously.
That history makes staffing and funding particularly consequential.
Child protection workers must determine which allegations require immediate intervention, which families can safely remain together, which children need removal and which families primarily need economic, behavioral health or other assistance.
Reducing unnecessary family separations can save money and spare children the trauma of entering foster care. Prevention programs can also reduce future demands on investigators and foster-care systems.
But those strategies depend on the state correctly identifying children who actually are in danger.
Legislature restores funding
Sherrill’s proposal was not the final word.
The Legislature subsequently modified the spending plan, and Sherrill signed the fiscal 2027 Appropriations Act on June 30.
The final $60.7 billion budget included additional support for children’s mental health and child advocacy centers, among other programs.
Sherrill described the overall budget as an effort to reduce the state’s structural deficit while protecting families and maintaining essential services.
That distinction is important politically and fiscally: Sherrill proposed a $28.8 million reduction in state DCF appropriations; the final budget enacted by lawmakers and signed by Sherrill did not simply adopt that reduction unchanged.
The episode nevertheless exposes a difficult question confronting New Jersey after the end of federal supervision.
For two decades, governors and lawmakers of both parties invested money, personnel and political attention in repairing a child welfare system that had failed badly enough for a federal court to intervene.
The results are difficult to dismiss. Caseloads fell dramatically. Fewer children were unnecessarily separated from their families.
Maltreatment rates declined. Children entering foster care were increasingly placed with relatives. And the plaintiffs who originally sued New Jersey ultimately agreed that the system had improved enough for federal supervision to end.
Those accomplishments also create a new challenge.
Federal judges and monitors are no longer responsible for making sure New Jersey preserves those gains.
New Jersey voters need to step into the role of holding government accountable before children start dying.
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