As this author traveled around the country, many university professors and domestic violence advocates told him that prosecuting or even intervening with social services is morally "wrong" in cases in which parents fail to protect their children. There are two problems with these arguments. First, these arguments assume that mothers should "never" be held accountable for failing to protect their children. Second, critics of governmental intervention in failure to protect cases believe that prosecutors, law enforcement officers, and social workers are not sensitive to issues of domestic violence, mental illness, and chemical dependence and, as a result, are responding inappropriately, even cruelly, in these cases. With respect to child protection workers, part of the problem are the standards promulgated by the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) for accreditation of social work undergraduate programs. Although CSWE recognizes the "purposes of social work education are to prepare competent and effective professionals," some of the accreditation standards limit the ability of universities to adopt curricula that will produce competent child protection workers. If individuals concede that egregious cases of failure to protect will never, and should never, be ignored by the government, the focus should be on developing clear, workable standards for the remaining cases and in ensuring these standards are developed by well-educated child protection professionals. To this end, the author suggests two reforms that are necessary: (1) Undergraduate and graduate institutions must undertake a massive reformation of the training currently provided to students interested in child protection careers; and (2) National, state, and local training given to child protection professionals in the field must be expanded, so that all cases of child maltreatment, including failure to protect cases, are handled consistently and competently. (Contains 4 notes.)