If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to [email protected]. Whether parents can overcome the problems that lead to abuse and neglect of their children is the essence of questions surrounding efforts to return children to their parents once legal custody of a child has been granted to the child welfare agency. Consistent with a legal and policy framework protecting parental rights in the United States, the threshold for separating a child from his or her parents is set high, and family reunification is the preferred permanency goal for most children who come into the child welfare system. Despite this policy preference, reunification rates are lower than desired, and, even when reunification does happen, some children experience subsequent placements.