Last year I spent several weeks with skilled child-protection workers looking into reports of abuse and neglect in East Harlem.

The county's child-protection workers now handle more cases than those in five other comparable parts of the state, Ms. Felice said.

The horror stories of sexual and physical abuse that child-protection workers recounted at meetings made him cry, he said.

Heather Staiman was the child-protection worker assigned to investigate the case.

Soon after that, Ms. Staiman asked to be transferred to another part of the agency after two years as a child-protection worker.

However hard New York has tried, the very fact that City Hall has announced it will be hiring 525 additional child-protection workers suggests more can be done.

The child-protection worker told the mother that her children would be placed in foster care if she could not provide for them.

Ms. Oberdorfer, a child-protection worker in Minneapolis, sees those same adoptions as inherently problematic.

Vanessa mentioned the incident to someone at her school the next day, and school officials called in child-protection workers from the Orange County Social Services Department.

By remaining anonymous, such callers prevent child-protection workers from interviewing them and obtaining potentially vital information about a case.