During the last years, the youth welfare system in Germany has been critically discussed and a number of different concepts for its improvement were brought up. The discussion took its start from singular unsuccessful child protection cases which had received a lot of public attention, but down to the present day, a broader investigation of such cases and the previously provided welfare work was still missing. Filling this gap was the aim of the here presented study. It shows results of a qualitative interview study which looked for commonalities between individual cases in order to identify starting points for the improvement of the welfare system. The interviews were conducted with welfare workers who had been in contact with families prior to an intra-familial infanticide and examine 20 cases that occurred in Germany from 1998-2008.