The number of children who have died despite them or their households being in contact with Oregon child welfare officials has grown in 2025. (Photo by Alexander Castro/Rhode Island Current)
More than 20 children known to Oregon’s child welfare agency have died in 2025, surpassing the number of fatalities the state has reported by mid-August for the past four years.
As of August 2025, 21 cases involving children on the agency’s radar have been logged as “critical incidents,” according to a dashboard from the Oregon Department of Human Services. That means a child has died as a result of conditions the agency believes are “reasonably believed to be the result of abuse.” In all of these cases, the child, their sibling or another child in the household was already in touch with the human services department within the past year.
Among the most recently published case findings is an Aug. 5 final report assembled by a critical incident review team, which looks for systemic failures or further reforms in the future.
The report’s findings center on a 1-month-old with parents who had intellectual disabilities. They had taken the newborn to the hospital in April after reportedly being mauled by a dog, suffering from seizures and brain injuries. Investigators later uncovered that the child’s father had a history of domestic violence against the mother and had thrown a phone at a wall that struck the 1-month-old in the head.
Sen. Sara Gelser Blouin, D-Corvallis, said this year’s figures are concerning but serve as a “limited snapshot” of information surrounding child deaths, which may not always be recorded as a result of abuse. The most recently released report is a reminder of how the state’s human services department has historically taken children away from parents with disabilities, she said.
“You had a woman who had an intellectual disability, but also it sounds like she was a victim of domestic violence,” said Gelser Blouin, also the chair of the Senate Committee on Human Services. “There was a lot that was going on there, and their fear was that she would be seen as somehow the problem, rather than receiving the help that she needed.”
The child’s older cousins had shared a motel with the family, and their own father had faced unsubstantiated allegations of abuse in 2024, bringing the newborn onto the agency’s radar. According to the report, one individual who reported the abuse was unaware of why law enforcement had not been involved or “why the family would report the child was trampled by a dog when it appeared to be a much more serious concern.”
But the recommendations suggest no policy changes, instead pointing to an ongoing “multi-phase review” for practices involving families with disabilities. The human services department did not directly respond to questions about the status of that report or another review child welfare officials are undergoing to improve “safety decision-making” for children in the state’s care. The agency said that review, which started in April 2025, would be complete in 90-120 days.
“How many times do we have to go through this before somebody says, maybe we’re doing something wrong and maybe we need something more than a fairly broad and uncertain promise to do something someday?” said Thomas Stenson, deputy legal director of the Portland-based Disability Rights Oregon. “I think it merits a much more serious look at what DHS is doing.”
Renewed attention on deaths, legislation
The state’s child welfare practices have come under the spotlight in the past year, most recently with the terms of a class-action lawsuit for foster youth abuse that went all the way to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The court sided with advocates like Disability Rights Oregon, who argued that a court-appointed expert must consider the needs of hundreds of youth who still live with their parents for arrangements such as trial stays as the expert works to clamp down on the number of children facing abuse within the system.
But when it comes to the deaths, the state’s human services department says that it’s too early to tell exactly why the number of deaths rose, noting that there are more cases of parents with a history of drug use. The Oregonian reported in April that the agency suspected several of the initial deaths this year involved parents or guardians using marijuana while their babies died sleeping in unsafe conditions.
Three of the reported fatalities in 2025 involved children in the legal custody of the state, and the terms of the settlement do not specifically address cases that prompt child fatality investigations. Of the 21 deaths reported by the state this year, 19 deaths so far have involved parents with a history of using drugs, while it was 16 last year, according to department spokesperson Jake Sunderland.
“While the number of (critical incident review teams) this year is more than 2024, these numbers are more consistent with the numbers in 2020-2022 and it is premature to draw any conclusions,” he wrote in a statement.
Gelser Blouin said the numbers are likely an undercount. She had helped secure an amendment to House Bill 3795 that would allow investigations from fatality investigators for any cases of “suspected” abuse or neglect made to the department, with the hopes of ensuring that the department would stop closing cases involving broader patterns of abuse involving foster homes or facilities.
She said she’s worried that the department intends to weaken the investigation process and narrow the scope of fatal abuse investigations even further, a practice that “undercuts the entire purpose” of the incident reviews in the first place.
“They said to me on the phone that if they did all of them, it would increase the liability to the state, which, to me, is not a good reason to not do them,” she said.
Gov. Tina Kotek vetoed the legislation, vowing to work with state agencies and lawmakers in the 2027 legislative session to review the investigation process and ensure discussion across different actors involved in child welfare. The governor wrote in her veto message that more than 50% of calls to the state’s child abuse hotline are screened out without further investigation, an additional load that could strain resources and take focus away from high-risk cases.
“Funding and positions were not provided to support the additional workload the bill imposes,” she wrote. “This change could unintentionally deepen disparities, particularly for low-income families and communities of color already disproportionately represented in the child welfare system.”
Asked if she plans to attempt similar reforms in the future, Gelser Blouin said she was unsure given the ongoing focus on cuts to programs from the federal government. Another bill she proposed, Senate Bill 1159, sought to move oversight of the state’s Children’s Advocate to the Long-Term Care Ombudsman, rather than the human services department. She said that bill did not advance to the Senate Committee on Rules after “paperwork errors” involving amendments and drafting.
Comments