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But today’s post focuses on one particularly jarring vignette–the story of a mother, her seven children, and a van–and what it means about how childwelfare policy is made and discussed today. David Reed, the Deputy Director of ChildWelfare Services in Indiana, introduced the story of this family in his testimony.
As an illustration, I am reposting my 2022 review of Roberts’ most recent book, Torn Apart: How the ChildWelfare System Destroys Black Families–and How Abolition Can Build a Safer Worl d. childwelfare system. ” Those who liked Shattered Bonds will likely love Torn Apart.
by Patty Flores I am grateful to be publishing this essay by a gifted and needed young voice in the childwelfare space. I then found myself in foster care and having to navigate the complicated childwelfare system, speaking little English and knowing nothing about how the child protection system (CPS) works in this country.
Minnesota’s use of these factors to support a child’s removal and/or ongoing separation due to alleged neglect discriminately and disproportionately impacts Black families who are overrepresented in Minnesota’s childwelfare system for neglect-related allegations.
The same scholar who claims predictive analytics in childwelfare isn’t biased also signs on to an extremist agenda calling for an automatic, mandatory extra level of family police surveillance of thousands of impoverished families. She also misunderstands abolition and mocks the words of a Black childwelfare activist.
Maine's first childwelfare ombudsman, Dean Crocker, understood the lessons from the tragic death of Logan Marr, who was taken when her family poverty was confused with "neglect" and killed in foster care. For starters, Maine should join the many states in which childwelfare court hearings are open.
To read the account on CR’s website you’d think their suit turned a dreadful, failing “childwelfare” system into a shining success story. But just four years later, the Tennessee Department of Child Services, their family police agency (a more accurate term than “childwelfare” agency) has opened a bunch of new ones.
That’s the real message behind a monthly newsletter touting “the good stuff in childwelfare.” It’s called “The Good Stuff in ChildWelfare” and it comes from The Field Center. Greeson, there is no “good stuff” in “childwelfare” as it exists today You and the rest of the Scooby Gang share responsibility for that fact.
Yes, it’s this guy: It’s tough being part of America’s “childwelfare” establishment these days. Americans are catching on to the harm done by a massive childwelfare surveillance state that falsely equates child removal with child safety, and investigates the homes of more than half of all Black children.
Even though we had fewer calls, the right calls were coming in and we got to the children who needed us,” the state’s Deputy Director of ChildWelfare Practice and Programing, Lacey Andresen, told The Oregonian. Indeed, Oregon’s experience is one more debunking of the whole racially-biased “pandemic of child abuse” myth.
It crops up over and over when there’s any story about what family police agencies (a more accurate term than “childwelfare” agencies) do to families. There aren’t enough beds for little guys that need this level of care, and the childwelfare system has to kind of figure out ‘how can we do the best with what we have?’”
A “scholar” who insists there is little or no racial bias in childwelfare writes a “predictive analytics” algorithm for the State of California. Somehow, the contract to write a so-called “independent ethics review” of the algorithm is given to another “scholar” who also insists there is little or no racial bias in childwelfare.
The fundamental fact of American “childwelfare” is that if you’re not white and affluent the system will discriminate against you. That’s not unique to “childwelfare” of course, but the field seems to be “in denial” about it to an extraordinary degree.) The phrase, of course, is “ best interests of the child.”
At last: A group involved in oversight of Maine childwelfare that shows a real understanding of the problems. The Maine ChildWelfare Advisory Panel (MCWAP) Citizen Review Panel has produced a report with six recommendations. Note that often these programs have the full support of state or local childwelfare agencies.
States have been hard-put to devise plans for implementing the new services because the bill was designed to fix a problem that did not exist–the alleged absence of childwelfare services designed to help families stay together. ” As the ChildWelfare Information Gateway, an information clearinghouse of the U.S.
But it’s hard to imagine anything that more perfectly captures the banality of childwelfare thinking than this waste of $20 million: Five organizations will spend this federal grant money to create a “Quality Improvement Center on Engaging Youth in Finding Permanency.” There are many such groups. Oh, don’t get me wrong.
Multiple organizations in Maine – but with the lead organizations dominated by private “providers” have put out a document they’re calling “A Framework for ChildWelfare Reform” in that state. The document is the latest to be released in Maine in the wake of what newspapers love to call a “spate” of child abuse deaths.
Vivek Sankaran, director of the Child Advocacy Law Clinic and the ChildWelfare Appellate Clinic at the University Michigan Law School summed it up perfectly: In many ways, the decision was unexceptional. Writing in The Imprint , Prof. We wouldn’t even allow a slight deviation from the rules. Lawyers would scream.
Indiana counties’ refusal to accept federal funds for family defense shows disdain for overwhelmingly poor, disproportionately Black families The federal government will reimburse family policing agencies and/or the courts for part of the cost of providing lawyers to indigent children and parents when the agency wants to investigate those families (..)
In Oregon, "childwelfare" has become a pathetic game of whack-a-mole. They also revealed that Oregons family police agency (a more accurate term than childwelfare agency) knew about the abuse for at least 18 months and did nothing. Looks like lawmakers are about to take another whack.
The big national takeaway is that these data – once again – refute the racist myth about COVID-19 and “childwelfare.” The federal government has released state-by-state data for the number of children taken from their parents in FFY 2021 (yes, they always run about a year late). And NCCPR has updated our rate-of-removal index.
And, concerning solutions: So childwelfare experts that I've spoken to have pointed to a few changes. Other states are as bad or worse, but, as it happens, the history of “childwelfare” failure in Massachusetts is particularly well-documented. She told NPR: So you have a number of problems.
More than just a dissent in an individual case, this opinion is a call to transform “childwelfare” in Michigan – and everywhere else. is a brilliant dissection of the failings of both law and practice in “childwelfare” in Michigan and pretty much everywhere else in America.
It seems like a week doesn’t go by without some “childwelfare” agency announcing an initiative that supposedly will make family policing kinder and gentler. It’s why all those plans for kinder, gentler family policing won’t do much good – and might even backfire. Connecticut is a case in point.
Yesterday, in a post about “childwelfare” and the moral bankruptcy of social work, I noted that Alan Detlaff of the University of Houston, who has dedicated his career to fighting racism in family policing (a more accurate term than “childwelfare”) had been ousted as the Dean of the university’s Graduate College of Social Work.
But it still fell into some of the traps that characterize much of the journalism of childwelfare – including a crucial misunderstanding of poverty and neglect and one inflammatory claim that, as originally published, was flat wrong. ? And always: New York City has one of the least awful family policing systems in America.
These two young people had something in common–a long history of neglect (and sometimes abuse) by their parents and a failure to intervene by childwelfare services despite multiple reports that children were in danger.
Watch the bodycam footage – but don’t watch it quite yet, since it might prompt you to jump to a conclusion that some of America’s leading childwelfare “scholars” want you to know couldn’t possibly correct. Peoples, ( OK, you can look now) you might be tempted to conclude that there is racial bias in childwelfare.
I single these stories out not because they are exceptionally awful - there’s far worse out there - but precisely because they are so typical of the journalism of childwelfare. One study after another has found that even small amounts of cash significantly reduce what childwelfare systems label as “neglect.”
They even acknowledged their own role in “contributing to racism in the legal field” in general and “within the childwelfare legal field in particular…” Offhand, I can’t think of an organization that says “establishment” more than the American Bar Association. The topic is “anti-Black systemic racism within the childwelfare system.”
Have you noticed something new about the “childwelfare” establishment lately? Barth, you may recall, is the one who declared that – unlike any other profession in America, childwelfare is 100% free of racial bias! Krugman is the very personification of the childwelfare establishment.
The post Supreme Court upholds constitutionality of the Indian ChildWelfare Act (ICWA) appeared first on National CASA/GAL Association for Children. The 7-2 Supreme Court decision is an enormous victory for Native children, Native families, and Tribal Nations.
The former Times reporter and still their go-to guy for childwelfare stories continues to soft-peddle racial bias. Perhaps Therolf fears that people are finally taking seriously the existence of systemic racial bias in childwelfare. Questions were screened in advance. As usual it's because of Garrett Therolf.
Attention childwelfare garden partiers: The skunks have arrived Every year, the Kempe Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Abuse holds a four-day virtual extravaganza featuring more than 100 panels and speakers from around the world. No one should be required to “be nice to people who do despicable things.”
But I should explain at the top why this commentary is on a blog about the “childwelfare” system. AFA’s members include some of the most strident supporters of tearing apart more families and some of those deepest in denial about racism in childwelfare. She also condemned the Indian ChildWelfare Act.
The post Celebrating women leaders in childwelfare — a message from our CEO appeared first on National CASA/GAL Association for Children. In March we celebrate Women’s History Month, and in this month, we honor the pioneering work of the late Carmen Ray-Bettineski.
Child Advocate" Maria Mossaides Who in the world could be against something like that? If you’ve followed Massachusetts childwelfare at all, you know exactly who: Massachusetts’ Fearmonger-in-Chief, state “child advocate” Maria Mossaides. Unfortunately, much of childwelfare operates with a pre- Gault mentality.
The Indian ChildWelfare Act (ICWA) of 1978 is a federal law that recognizes tribal sovereignty and governs jurisdiction over the removal of Native American (Indian) children from their families.
She is the state’s “Child Advocate,” and before that ran a prestigious private agency specializing in adoption and foster care. Like most people in “childwelfare” her intentions are good. She has repeatedly misused her power and privilege. In a report on Harmony’s case, Mossaides exercises that judgment ruthlessly.
If you are wondering what mental health and childwelfare services KVC provides and in which areas, this guide is for you! Get ready to learn how you or others can take advantage of KVC’s child and family services. The next subsidiary is KVC Kansas which provides childwelfare and mental health services.
Read The New Social Worker’s book review of Confronting the Racist Legacy of the American ChildWelfare System: The Case for Abolition by Alan Dettlaff. Reviewed by Stephen Cummings.
Police officers and childwelfare caseworkers were ordering a woman to open her front door. Here’s how ProPublica describes one encounter: It was 5:30 a.m. Flashlights beamed in through the windows of the ground-floor apartment in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. When she did, the first thing she saw was that the police had their guns drawn.
I know of no study of how often caseworkers are blinded by what might be called Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Home syndrome, but it happens often enough that one former state “Child Advocate,” Kevin Ryan, made this recommendation to the New Jersey childwelfare agency in 2005: Until someone demonstrates a correlation between cleanliness and child (..)
But for America’s giant childwelfare industry of helping professionals, that spoils all the fun. Not a lot of money either, since we know that remarkably small amounts of cash are enough to significantly reduce what family police agencies call “neglect.”
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