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by Marie Cohen Recognizing implicit bias in mandated reporting training is a national focus for addressing racial inequity in child welfare. I had my first experience with the updated training last month as part of my preparation to serve as a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) for a child in fostercare.
ENTRIES INTO FOSTERCARE PER THOUSAND IMPOVERISHED CHILDREN, 2022 This is what we mean by "Child Rremoval Capital of America Of all the options for placing children torn from their homes, among the very worst are so-called shelters. First came the bill that would send caseloads skyrocketing.
They think they’re going to be working with families, helping families to engage in services, to be self-sufficient, to move on to higher education,” Everett said. The story begins and ends with the story of Maria Toscano and her desperate efforts to schedule a visit with her children in fostercare. This is not an aberration.
The biggest problem with the so-called “child welfare” system is that it has nothing to do with the welfare of children. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) replaced welfare as we knew it. That led to the child being thrown into fostercare.
When NCCPR released a comprehensive report on Colorado child welfare in September 2023, we included a section called Tapeworm in the System. Its about Colorados love affair with the worst form of care for children group homes and institutions. The report added: The risk of harm to children in RTFs is endemic to the operating model.
Maine's first child welfare 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 fostercare. Most of all she is wrong to ignore the enormous harm of needless removal. ?
It’s literally computerized racial profiling: race and ethnicity are explicitly used to rate the risk that a child will be harmed. But like everything else in family policing, the reasons children wind up in fostercare are arbitrary, capricious, cruel – and subject to racial and class bias.
I also expressed the hope that we would see more stories about such families and more self-reflection within the system and in journalism. A dirty home means you’re neglecting your children – so they wind up in fostercare. For more than half of all Black children, a child abuse investigation will be part of their childhoods.
Sarah Font is telling foster youth boils down to this: You can have a free college education – as long as you forego any chance that there will be a family cheering you on at graduation. After following issues involving fostercare for decades, I’ve gotten used to the extent to which people in the system hate birth parents.
They wonder if an artificial intelligence tool that the Allegheny County Department of Human Services uses to predict which children could be at risk of harm singled them out because of their disabilities. She’s even part of a group that rushed to defend a self-proclaimed “race realist” law professor beloved by Tucker Carlson.
Even if they know that can do enormous harm, they may feel obligated to do it because they are mandated reporters. Because that’s what the adverse childhood experience of a child abuse investigation is really all about (except, of course, the toxic environment would be fostercare, not a carcinogen factory).
As Sankaran and Church point out: any public reporting of the number of adopted children who once again enter fostercare is likely an underestimate. Even with these limited data, a recent study found that more than 66,000 adopted children ended up back in fostercare between 2008 to 2020, an average of 12 a day.
That’s because it’s meant specifically for those who have read a study concocted by a who’s who of family policing’s “caucus of denial” – those who claim that, somehow, child welfare is magically immune from the racism that infects every other aspect of American life. Therefore “child welfare” isn’t racist. And it’s quite a dance.
● Take a step back, see – and hear – how the family policing system really works in this report from NPR, featuring perspectives from JMAC for Families and NCCPR: ● You know how defenders of computerized racial profiling in family policing (more accurate terms than “predictive analytics” in “child welfare”) defend their biased algorithms by a.
“But a group of mothers, attorneys, and other advocates who know the fostercare system from the inside saw things differently,” Hurley writes in a just-published follow-up story for The New Republic. But in the meantime, the whole “pandemic of child abuse” myth has done all sorts of harm to children. Emphasis added] ?
Educator : Social workers educate clients about resources, coping strategies, and life skills to enhance their well-being and self-sufficiency. Child Welfare Specialist : Social workers in this role focus on the safety and well-being of children, often within the context of child protective services or fostercare systems.
One report revealed that this support and acceptance is associated with greater self-esteem, social support, general health status, less depression, less substance abuse and less suicidal ideation and behaviors among LGBTQIA+ youth. Self-harming or harming others. Use of alcohol, tobacco or other drugs.
Some advocates in Maine have tried to use one data point in the federal governments annual Child Maltreatment report to justify the states ongoing foster-care panic. Oregons governor wants to loosen regulations curing abuse in fostercare because they cant think of any other way to deal with a so-called shortage of placements.
This side of the child welfare story - what happens to mothers like Alexis after their children enter the system - is seldom seen. Police officers and child welfare caseworkers were ordering a woman to open her front door. Here’s how it begins: It was 5:30 a.m. In 2021 ProPublica published a superb expose of this practice. Sarah Font.
The end of 2021 brought more outstanding reporting on various dark corners of the “child welfare” system. ? How about TANF as a child welfare slush fund. Also: In one state, The Imprint reports , foster youth have won a partial victory on the Social Security issue. ? ProPublica has an in-depth story on that one. ?
Here are the most common types of child abuse: Emotional abuse: Mental or emotional abuse typically aims to impact a child’s well-being, self-esteem and self-worth. Physical injuries without an explanation or with an unconvincing story about its occurrence may indicate intentional harm to a child. Behavioral changes.
This scholarship was established in memory of Donna Millette-Fridge by the School of Social Work in recognition of her commitment to helping the mentally ill become self-sufficient. My plan is continuing to work in the group setting and IOP services, specifically with individuals who are experiencing self-harm, depression and anxiety.
On August 24, 2024, the Washington Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF) proudly announced in a press statement that it had reduced the number of children in out-of-home care by nearly half since 2018. Specifically, the number of children in fostercare had fallen from 9,171 in 2018 to 4,971 as of August 14, 2024.
● Dr. Sharon McDaniel, a pioneer in doing kinship fostercare the right way, speaks out about the enormous harm of doing it the wrong way – through the subterfuge known as “hidden fostercare.” They’re suing Riverside County and the private agency that oversaw their fostercare.
Readers are invited to practice self-care while navigating this content and to consider reading the findings with a group to engage in collective reflection. Tyrone Howard et al, Beyond Blind Removal: Color Consciousness and Anti-Racism in Los Angeles County Child Welfare. million times.
Self-proclaimed liberal Elizabeth Bartholet wanted to force every pregnant woman to admit a spy into her living room from pregnancy until the child was preschool age. Bartholet doesn’t say if women would have to self-report their pregnancies or if their doctors or maybe their neighbors would turn them in.) Image created by openart.ai
He co-authors a “news analysis” for the Los Angeles Times that sounds like a pitch by a company selling “predictive analytics” software for child welfare. The post talked about Therolf’s profound discomfort with any suggestion that there is systemic racial bias in child welfare. Second of two parts. Read part one here. County DCFS.
A longtime "child welfare" establishment apparatchik says the quiet part out loud Most of the time, the columns that longtime “child welfare” establishment apparatchik Paul DiLorenzo, writes for The Imprint , are just dull regurgitations of establishment talking points. But his most recent column is, in its own way, fascinating.
Bill Diamond Every state legislature has one: the lawmaker who rushes to “blast” the state or local “child welfare” agency after a child “known to the system” dies. A brief recap For most of the past 25 years, Maine embraced a take-the-child-and-run approach to child welfare. Removals of children into fostercare skyrocketed.
In an article about The False Gods of Social Change Kevin Campbell, Cormac Russell and Elizabeth Wendell write: In practice, service users receiving aid from the government and charities exchange freedoms of self-determination, choice, participation, and control for the promise of subsistence, not equity, health, or even dignity.
Fong asks in a commentary for the Hartford Courant if the head of the state’s family police agency will make sure there’s no foster-care panic. She writes: DCF has expressed a commitment to keeping families together, and has worked, impressively, to decrease fostercare caseloads and refer families to community supports.
Part one of NCCPRs news and commentary year in review for 2024 Tomorrow: Part two looks at some of 2024s finest journalism exploring wrongful removal and other harms to children caused by our current system of family policing. Americas massive child welfare surveillance state was built on horror stories.
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