This article argues that a child welfare system has a significant responsibility to detect and treat emotional and behavioral problems and disorders as a routine part of involvement with child protective services and out-of-home care. Given the very high risk of mental health needs in this population, preventing the development of these psychiatric disorders among youth who do not currently manifest symptoms also should be a priority. This article addresses several systematic reasons why children's mental health has not been effectively integrated into the child welfare system and suggests one clear pathway to addressing such problems is to create a system that maintains as its focus the health, well-being, and healthy development of children in their families. One mechanism to ensure that programs and systems maintain a focus on this vision is to ensure that the needs and strengths of children and families are accurately assessed and communicated to all levels of the systems.