Best Interest of the Child

As of September, 11,000 children were in state custody in North Carolina. On average, they’ll stay in the state’s care for one to two years. And despite federal and state laws requiring “reasonable efforts” to reunify families, most will never go home. 

This three-part investigation from The Assembly and WBTV examines North Carolina’s child welfare system—and, in particular, Durham County, which has become a hub of parental rights activism. Each installment explores the case of a parent who spent years fighting to regain custody of their children. 

Together, they show a system that sometimes fails to live up to the state’s goal of “preventing [the] breakup of the family” where “desirable and possible.”

Among our findings: 

• Of the more than 43,000 cases of child “maltreatment” the state recorded in 2020 and 2021, only about 10 percent involved victims of physical or sexual abuse. The vast majority suffered from “neglect,” a term that experts say is often synonymous with poverty.

• Nearly 1,200 N.C. parents have their rights terminated each year, and they are disproportionately Black and overwhelmingly poor. 

• Only 30 percent of the 5,020 children who left N.C.’s foster care system in the 2022-23 fiscal year were reunited with their parents.

• Durham’s reunification rate of 22 percent is less than half the national average. And of the 34 Durham parents who lost their rights in the 2021-22 fiscal year, only one was white.

• The state spends 13 times more money on foster care and adoption than it does on programs designed to keep families together. 

“The narrative is that if you’re caught up in the child welfare system, you’re a bad parent who’s perpetuating harm against your child,” said Matt Anderson, a former executive at Children’s Home Society, the largest nonprofit foster care placement organization in North Carolina. 

“These are parents who love their children, are doing the best for their children, and are dealing with very easy-to-solve economic, social-support issues. And if we were to invest in meeting those needs, families would be just fine.”

Part 1: The Poverty Trap

When a Durham mother fled an abusive partner, the county took her children away—and she almost lost them forever.

Part 2: A No-Win Scenario

Jatoia Potts lost both her children because she couldn’t explain her baby’s injuries. She never stood a chance against the state’s child welfare system.

Part 3: Presumption of Guilt

Garnell Hill has never been accused of abuse or neglect. But Durham County has kept his son in foster care for more than five years—and now wants to put him up for adoption.