The Utah Child Protection System: Analysis and Proposals for Change

Raising children-providing them care and supervision, determining their living standard, and supervising their religious, moral and secular education-is, in this country at least, primarily the task of the children's parents. From the time of the earliest English settlements, however, society as a whole has asserted power to supervise parents in their discharge of this task. Although this power is exercised in numerous ways that do not involve state action, the state has assumed increasing responsibility to exercise supervisory power through administrative agencies and courts. For example, all states require that child abuse and neglect be reported to state agencies, all have administrative agencies charged with enforcing laws for the protection of children and all have juvenile courts with power to define when children are "abused," "neglected" or "dependent" and to order that parental rights be limited or even eliminated.