The tape is replayed again. Except for the names of the child victims and Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) officials, the scenario is the same.

A tragic death, evidence of "critical lapses by Children's Protective Services (CPS)," public outrage, resignations or firings, promises of immediate remedial action, and appointment of yet another blue-ribbon committee to review the structure of child-welfare services.

Equally predictable is that the members of the new blue-ribbon committee will have never read the reports of previous committees that gather dust in some Olympia storeroom.

Uma Ahluwalia is the latest DSHS official to walk the plank; she assuredly will not be the last.

Why the bleak picture? It is not because our public officials are incompetent or lack the will to protect children. It is because the officials and the public have unrealistic expectations about a 40-year-old child-protection system that is long past due for the junkyard.

I started in pediatrics in the late 1950s before child abuse was discovered. I organized the first child-protection team at Children's Hospital in the mid-1960s, and testified before the Washington Legislature in 1969 when the mandatory child-abuse reporting law was enacted. Since 2001, I have headed the Harborview Foster Care Health Project aimed at improving health and early learning services for Washington state children in foster care.

When I testified in 1969, I said that though mandatory reporting was a good idea, it would do little to reduce the incidence of child abuse. The prediction has been borne out, especially with child homicide. We could paper the walls with CPS workers without any impact on the number of child deaths.

It is like the story of a policeman walking his beat one night finding a drunk on his knees, searching for something on the street. The cop asks the drunk, "What are you doing?"

"Looking for my car keys," says the drunk.

The cop asks, "Where did you lose your keys?"

"I don't know," the man answers.

The cop asks, "Then, why are you looking here if you don't know where you lost your keys?"

Responds the drunk, "Because the light is better here, under the streetlight."

We cannot keep looking for strategies to prevent child abuse under the CPS streetlight. The notion of child-protective services was idealistic when first launched, namely that social workers could both investigate and support children and families where physical abuse occurred. The system quickly became overwhelmed by societal changes; the supportive role fell by the wayside. Workers, few with social-work training, can scarcely keep up with the investigations they are called upon to do.

Now, physical abuse constitutes 10 to 20 percent of accepted referrals to CPS, and sexual abuse 6 to 7 percent. Thus, about 75 percent of accepted referrals now involve neglect, the majority involving substance abuse.

It is small wonder that the turnover of CPS workers is so high. Imagine a job where every client one sees does not want to see you, and where the fear of blame is omnipresent. Police are not blamed for crime, yet CPS workers are blamed for child abuse.

While we continue to focus on the CPS system that is basically flawed, the only approach proven to reduce disorders of parenting like abuse and neglect is ignored. I refer to regular visits by public-health nurses to homes of babies at higher risk of abuse and neglect. Unlike CPS workers, nurses are generally accepted by families, and trained to detect parenting danger signals.

I doubt that our policymakers even know about this prevention strategy. They don't know about it because there is no vocal constituency pushing it. Even the public-health nurses, once proud standard bearers in their profession, are dispirited and do not advocate for themselves.

In summary, I call upon our state administrative and legislative leaders to swallow a healthy dose of realism. As long as there are no qualifying tests for parenthood, no amount of government action can prevent all child homicides. Likewise, no number of background checks and quality reports will weed out every incompetent CPS worker.

Please stow the rhetoric about protecting children until that need is placed on the same plane as replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct. And, finally, please continue the unique bipartisan collaboration that has blessed Washington's efforts in the areas of child protection and foster care. Let us have, however, less indignation and more wisdom.

Dr. Abraham B. Bergman is an attending physician at Harborview Medical Center and professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington.