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Child Deaths Mark Crisis In Child Welfare System, New Report Shows

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A new investigative series by The Fayetteville Observer looked into the death of 120 children in North Carolina from 2011 to 2016 whose cases had been referred to social services before they died.
Credit U.S. Navy

From 2011 to 2016, more than 120 children died in North Carolina within a year of their cases being referred to social services, according to a new investigative series by The Fayetteville Observer. 

The investigation was prompted by the drowning death of toddler Rylan Ott last year in Moore County, and it reveals a system where children often fall through the cracks and into abusive, and even fatal, environments.

Host Frank Stasio talks with Greg Barnes, senior reporter at The Fayetteville Observer, about his series “Fatal Flaws.” 

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Laura Pellicer is a digital reporter with WUNC’s small but intrepid digital news team.
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.
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