Michigan’s children are falling through the cracks—and the state’s own system is to blame.

Since 2017, child abuse and neglect investigations have dropped 18% across Michigan. But those closest to the crisis—including judges, prosecutors, and child welfare officials—say abuse isn’t decreasing. What’s changed is how the state handles reports of abuse: it centralized everything.

Now, when someone calls to report child abuse, they’re routed to one of just two centralized intake centers. The person on the other end of the line might be hundreds of miles away with no knowledge of the local community. These call center workers make life-or-death decisions about whether a child’s case gets investigated at all—and too often, they get it wrong.

In northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula, where families often face generational poverty and complex challenges, local officials say valid reports are routinely screened out. Children have been left in homes where they were starved, beaten, and strangled—because the centralized system didn’t consider their situations serious enough to investigate.

This isn't just a policy failure—it's a moral one. Every child deserves to be protected by a system that understands their reality. That can’t happen when decision-making is stripped from the local level.

We call on the Michigan Legislature and Governor Gretchen Whitmer to act now:

Restore child abuse intake decisions to local counties. Let social workers, judges, and advocates who know these communities determine when to intervene—not bureaucrats in distant offices.

A top-down system can never replace local knowledge and accountability. Michigan’s kids deserve better.

Sign this petition to demand a safer, smarter, more responsive child protection system—one that starts by listening to the people who know what’s happening in their own communities.