North Carolina’s current child welfare laws are failing to protect its most vulnerable children. Infant deaths due to parental drug use remain a critical issue, as seen in the tragic case of six-week-old Brayden Cummings, who suffocated while his mother was high on methamphetamine, Xanax, and methadone. Shockingly, North Carolina law does not classify prenatal drug use as child abuse or neglect, allowing drug-addicted mothers to leave the hospital with their newborns without legal repercussions or state intervention. Additionally, the state’s foster care system is overwhelmed, with 12,000 children lingering in uncertainty due to a bias toward reunification, often resulting in children being removed from stable foster homes and placed back with negligent relatives. With 50-80% of removals involving parental substance abuse and the number of available foster homes declining, urgent action is needed to ensure children are placed in safe, permanent homes within one year of removal.

While other states have implemented reforms to prioritize child safety and permanency, North Carolina lags behind. Governor Cooper’s veto of HB918 in 2020 stalled progress in improving adoption policies, even as states like Georgia, Missouri, and Tennessee enacted laws to streamline the adoption process and protect foster children’s rights. A Foster Child Rights Act would address these failures by expediting permanency for children under three, granting long-term foster parents a presumption of nonrelative kin status, and classifying in-utero drug exposure as an aggravating circumstance. These changes would ensure that vulnerable children are not left to suffer in unstable environments but instead placed in secure, loving homes as quickly as possible. North Carolina must take decisive action to prioritize child safety over bureaucratic delays.

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