Who is in "The System" -- and Why

Who is in "The System" -- and Why

Some parents are vicious. Some
parents are sadistic. Some parents brutally
beat, rape, torture, and murder their children.
Those cases get intensive public and
media attention -- as they should.
But the typical foster child was not taken
from a parent like that. Such cases represent a
tiny fraction of the child protective services
caseload.
Out of every 100 children investigated as
possible victims of abuse, four are
“substantiated” victims of all forms of physical
abuse, from the most minor to the most severe,
about two more are victims of sexual abuse.
Many of the rest are false allegations or cases in
which a family's poverty has been confused with
neglect.
1
Far more common than a child who
comes into care because he was beaten are
children who come into foster care because the
foodstamps ran out or because an illness went
untreated after parents were kicked off Medicaid
or because a single mother trying to stay off
welfare could not provide adequate supervision
while she worked. Indeed, the former director of
intake for child protective services in Denver,
Colorado acknowledges that some children are
taken just because their parents are down on
their luck, out of work, or unable to provide
adequate shelter.
2
Three separate studies since 1996
have found that 30 percent of America’s foster
children could be safely in their own homes right
now, if their birth parents had safe, affordable
housing.
3
A fourth study found that “in terms of
reunification, even substance abuse is not as
important a factor as income or housing in
determining whether children will remain with
their families.”
4
A study of "boarder babies" -- children
who spend months in hospitals, found that the
biggest single factor causing their forced hospital
stays was lack of housing.
5
Families struggling to keep their
children out of foster care are stymied by two
major problems: homelessness and low public
assistance grants, according to two New York
City studies.
6
A study of "lack of supervision" cases
in New York City found that in 52 percent of the
cases studied, the service needed most was
what one might expect -- day care or
babysitting.
9
But the "service" offered most often
was foster care.
Courts in New York City and Illinois
have found that families are repeatedly kept
apart solely because they lack decent housing.
10
In Genesee County, Michigan, which
includes Flint, from 2000 to 2003, the foster-care
population doubled – and even the head of the
county child welfare office said one of the main
reasons is they’re removing children from
women forced to leave their children with
unsuitable caretakers while they go to jobs they
must take under the state’s welfare laws.
11
In California, homeless children were
given emergency shelter only on condition that
they be separated from their parents, until a
successful lawsuit put an end to the practice.
12
The National Commission on
Children found that children often are
removed from their families "prematurely or
unnecessarily" because federal aid formulas
give states "a strong financial incentive" to
do so rather than provide services to keep
families together.
13
And across the country, several people
who have run child welfare systems have
acknowledged that their own systems take away
too many children.
In Washington D.C., where the foster
care system was run for several years by the
federal courts, the first receiver named by the
court to run the agency found that between onethird and one-half of D.C.'s foster children could
be returned to their parents immediately -- if they
just had a decent place to live.
14
A former District Administrator in
Broward County Florida estimated that 35
percent of the children in that county’s foster
care system could have remained safely in their
own homes had the right kinds of help been
provided.
15
And the former head of one of the
nation’s largest child welfare systems, Los
Angeles County’s put the figure at up to 50
percent.
16
Compounding the problem: Child
welfare workers sometimes are in denial about
the importance of providing concrete help to
families. A study of cases in Milwaukee County,
Wis. found that housing problems were a key
cause of removal and a key barrier to
reunification. But The researchers write that
while birth parents “see housing as a major
source of concern …child welfare workers are
less attentive to this concern.”
They continue:
“Perhaps child welfare workers in
Milwaukee are more focused on parental
functioning and less attentive to concrete needs
such as housing because of the principles
guiding agency practice and the workers’
education and training. Alternatively workers …
may tend to ignore housing as a problem rather
than deal with the cognitive dissonance caused
by the recognition that they cannot help their
clients with this important need.”
17
Just as not every parent is sadistic, not
every parent is blameless, either. There is the
broad range of cases in-between the extremes --
cases where a parent may well be partly to
blame, but where intervening to preserve the
family is still the best way to protect the child.

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