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by Patty Flores I am grateful to be publishing this essay by a gifted and needed young voice in the child welfare space. She spent half of her life in fostercare, struggling with substance abuse. Youth with lived experiences in fostercare face countless challenges, even when the abuse finally stops – one way or another.
As an illustration, I am reposting my 2022 review of Roberts’ most recent book, Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families–and How Abolition Can Build a Safer Worl d. child welfare system. ” Those who liked Shattered Bonds will likely love Torn Apart.
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 child welfare policy is made and discussed today. David Reed, the Deputy Director of Child Welfare Services in Indiana, introduced the story of this family in his testimony.
Year after year, states and the federal government continue to release annual data showing a decline in the number of children in fostercare, congratulating themselves on keeping families together. percent over the previous year 15.6 percent since 2018. “We
Their “study” methodology guarantees most abuse will be overlooked, and their advisory panel consists of extremists who want to expand the child welfare surveillance state while denying any problem with racial bias. Worst of all, they’re trying to persuade an “advisory board” of foster youth into believing this is legitimate.
Whether fostercare seems like something you’re called to or your are simply curious to learn more, you’re in the right place. On any given day, nearly 407,000 children are in fostercare in America. The primary goal of fostercare is reunification. The Statistics: Children in FosterCare.
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 child welfare services despite multiple reports that children were in danger. Colin Gray was ordered to retrieve the other children, or they would be placed in fostercare.
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 child welfare services designed to help families stay together. Sometimes, in order to prevent the need for fostercare, mom and dad might need a little help.
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. it has to be held for the children!”
Despite public conversation and consistent news coverage of the individuals affected by the opioid epidemic, there remains a large segment of society that is often overlooked: children and youth in fostercare. During these past epidemics, the child welfare and fostercare systems became completely overwhelmed.
There are two very important things to know about the process by which a child welfare agency removes a child from a parent and places that child with some other kinship caregiver. This process, known as kinship fostercare, is usually the least harmful form of fostercare. But it’s still fostercare.
by Marie Cohen This post was originally published on Child Welfare Monitor DC on December 9, 2024. Because I rarely post on that site, I am letting it expire and will include future DC-focused posts on Child Welfare Monitor. The number of children entering fostercare increased for the first time in over ten years.
For example, in Minnesota Black children are twice as likely to be thrown into fostercare as white children. Minnesota’s record of racial disparity in investigations and fostercare is worse than the national average, and the disparities in Hennepin and Ramsey Counties are worse than the state average.
And again, Black children are hit hardest, taken into fostercare at a rate 50% above their rate in the Indiana child population. In Indiana in 2022, 85% of the time , when children were thrown into fostercare their parents were not even accused of physical or sexual abuse. The harm isn’t just emotional.
To read the account on CR’s website you’d think their suit turned a dreadful, failing “child welfare” 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 “child welfare” agency) has opened a bunch of new ones. Not anymore.
Child welfare’s foremost data nerd has weighed in on the mess in central Florida child welfare caused by – well caused by a lot of things, including the dreadful performance of Eckerd Connects. Florida calls it a “Community-Based Care” (CBC) system of “child welfare,” but both those terms are euphemisms.)
But once home from the hospital, the children still are left in fostercare – with foster parents who are eager to adopt. Presumably this also would rule out a large proportion of those providing kinship fostercare, since they tend to be grandparents. For starters, there’s another caretaker in the home.
That’s the real message behind a monthly newsletter touting “the good stuff in child welfare.” Let’s focus on the “good stuff”: If you happen to be a foster child in Grand Rapids Michigan you can get a free haircut! It’s called “The Good Stuff in Child Welfare” and it comes from The Field Center. But all that is such a downer.
Back to Blogs Community Blog Child Welfare FAQs Regarding Family Detention or Deportation click to Download information in pdf The following information is not legal advice or guidance. What is the states role in overseeing child welfare in Colorado?
In Oregon, "child welfare" has become a pathetic game of whack-a-mole. They also revealed that Oregons family police agency (a more accurate term than child welfare agency) knew about the abuse for at least 18 months and did nothing. And the reason for that is not because there are too few foster parents.
You probably remember the story: White adoptive parents of six black children drive themselves and the children off a cliff, killing them all. That may be all you remember, and perhaps wondering what would drive such a noble couple to such despair. After all, they rescued these children from their terrible parents, didn’t they?
Now, let’s see if Senator Soundbite tries to undermine the progress The Oregonian has a story about the decline in fostercare numbers in that state – and how it’s not due to more child abuse supposedly being hidden due to COVID lockdowns. That will start a foster-care panic, another surge in needless removals of children.
KABB-TV in San Antonio reported this week on the tragic death of 16-year-old Mia Morales who died in a car crash after running away from a makeshift fostercare placement. It’s remarkable how many tragic failings of Texas fostercare – and the failed attempt to fix it with a McLawsuit – are illustrated by this one case.
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. For starters, Maine should join the many states in which child welfare court hearings are open.
Yesterday, in a post about “child welfare” 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 “child welfare”) had been ousted as the Dean of the university’s Graduate College of Social Work.
Multiple organizations in Maine – but with the lead organizations dominated by private “providers” have put out a document they’re calling “A Framework for Child Welfare Reform” in that state. They’ve been led, or rather misled, by the state’s child welfare “ombudsman,” Christine Alberi. And that’s the key problem.
Have you noticed something new about the “child welfare” establishment lately? Barth, you may recall, is the one who declared that – unlike any other profession in America, child welfare is 100% free of racial bias! He begins with this: Nice to see acknowledgment of the many ways that child welfare services do help support families.
So the public was primed to scapegoat family preservation when Nixzmary Brown died in January, 2006 – leading to a foster-care panic , a sharp sudden increase in the number of children torn from everyone they know and love and consigned to the chaos of fostercare. The panic was welcomed by the Times.
The big national takeaway is that these data – once again – refute the racist myth about COVID-19 and “child welfare.” Nationwide, entries into fostercare declined by five percent. In Kansas, entries into fostercare also increased by five percent – but Kansas was worse than Missouri to begin with.
But it’s hard to imagine anything that more perfectly captures the banality of child welfare 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.” Where oh where to begin. There are many such groups.
Fostering is just one of many ways to help children in crisis, so here are seven other ways you can help a child in fostercare: 1. Children in fostercare have likely experienced abuse, neglect, or some type of family trauma. Provide Respite Care . Mentor a Teen . 27% less likely to start drinking.
At last: A group involved in oversight of Maine child welfare that shows a real understanding of the problems. The Maine Child Welfare 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 child welfare agencies.
But it still fell into some of the traps that characterize much of the journalism of child welfare – including a crucial misunderstanding of poverty and neglect and one inflammatory claim that, as originally published, was flat wrong. ? Wednesday: The New York Times published a front-page story about the study that was, mostly, very good.
Private fostercare agencies in New York tell victims of abuse on their watch: If we don´t get a taxpayer bailout, you won´t get compensation for what was done to you. According to the child welfare trade journal, The Imprint : “These victims’ lives have been ruined forever. A lawyer for survivors apparently agrees.
It crops up over and over when there’s any story about what family police agencies (a more accurate term than “child welfare” agencies) do to families. There aren’t enough beds for little guys that need this level of care, and the child welfare system has to kind of figure out ‘how can we do the best with what we have?’”
It seems like a week doesn’t go by without some “child welfare” agency announcing an initiative that supposedly will make family policing kinder and gentler. On the other hand, another in a long line of studies suggests it may reduce fostercare entries. Connecticut is a case in point. The effort is probably sincere.
If you are wondering what mental health and child welfare services KVC provides and in which areas, this guide is for you! Or, if you’re not looking for services, learn how you can join KVC as an advocate, volunteer, financial supporter, event sponsor, foster or adoptive parent, or even team member. KVC Kansas. Learn more here.
It turns out, Paris Hilton knows more about "residential treatment facilities" than at least one self-proclaimed "child welfare scholar." By pretending that this industry has nothing to do with his sacred, beloved “child welfare” system. That’s why you’re in fostercare.” So how did Barth respond? But Paris Hilton does.
Two online news sites published more than 10,000 words about fostercare in West Virginia. Yet the equivalent happens, over and over and over, when the topic is fostercare. Parents who lose their children to fostercare, on the other hand, are overwhelmingly poor and disproportionately nonwhite.
More than just a dissent in an individual case, this opinion is a call to transform “child welfare” in Michigan – and everywhere else. is a brilliant dissection of the failings of both law and practice in “child welfare” in Michigan and pretty much everywhere else in America. In contrast, McCormack wrote, when Washington D.C.
A “scholar” who insists there is little or no racial bias in child welfare 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 child welfare.
This is the model that’s proven so successful in New York City – where a comprehensive evaluation found that it reduced time in fostercare with no compromise of safety. If you’ve followed Massachusetts child welfare at all, you know exactly who: Massachusetts’ Fearmonger-in-Chief, state “child advocate” Maria Mossaides.
Most of the time, when I take issue with the journalism of child welfare, it involves reporters who mean well but have taken to heart decades of conventional wisdom. Here’s how it comes out: County Children “served” in fostercare per thousand Berks 4.4 Lackawanna County, Pa., Lackawanna 5.3 Luzerne 11.2 Westmoreland 4.5
She is the state’s “Child Advocate,” and before that ran a prestigious private agency specializing in adoption and fostercare. Like most people in “child welfare” her intentions are good. million – and the state would save more than that in reducing needless investigations and fostercare.
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