It has been months since Alabama DHR came under fire following the death of three-year-old KJ Starks, who died in a hot van while under the state’s care. Since then, there have been statements, briefings, and interviews. But no change. No accountability. No reform. Just the same pattern of silence and deflection.
Instead of addressing what went wrong, DHR has been kicking the can down the road, shifting focus and moving forward as if the tragedy was an isolated event. But it was not. It was the product of a system that has long lost sight of its purpose.
“Child protective services have become a system that no longer serves the people but feeds upon them.”
— Nancy Schaefer, Georgia State Senator (2007)
Former Georgia State Senator Nancy Schaefer once warned that child protection agencies had become a system that no longer serves the people but feeds upon them. She was right. Alabama has become the evidence she feared.
Across this state, families continue to suffer under a structure that claims to protect children but too often destroys them. Parents who complete every service still lose their rights. Teenagers removed for legal discipline end up pregnant, homeless, or traumatized while under state supervision. Children are left in dangerous placements. Families are broken apart not by proof but by conceived power.
DHR’s leaders talk about new facilities, new hires, and new beginnings. But the truth is that no new building can cover the cracks in integrity. You cannot paint over pain. You cannot silence grief by changing the subject.
What Alabama DHR still refuses to learn is that no structure, no leadership reshuffle, and no public statement will fix what has been built on broken trust. Families do not heal through silence, and children do not thrive in a culture of fear.
Parents across Alabama are asking the same question: how many failures make a pattern? And when that pattern becomes undeniable, who will have the courage to call it what it is, state-sanctioned harm?
This is not outrage for attention. It is truth born out of exhaustion. It is the voice of families who have waited long enough for the system to listen.
Nancy Schaefer said it first.
We are still saying it now. Because Alabama DHR still refuses to learn.
