A distraught 12-year-old girl who just returned to foster care after a month on the run last summer can’t explain why Child Protective Services (CPS) hasn’t yet secured a new home for her. looked me straight in the eye. . For the past five years, I have volunteered to assist her as a court-appointed special counsel.
Then, mixing in some more colorful language, she said to me: “Please stop saying that word and fix it.”
I am concerned that child welfare is currently locked in a battle where both sides seem to be vying to maximize the death and suffering of children in order to defend their cause. I would like to say the same thing about the two camps. Stop just saying words and fix them. Divided, there is little chance of bringing about change in Washington. Together, anything is possible.
On the one hand, despite millions of CPS investigations and hundreds of thousands of family separations each year, not a single child dies who could have been removed from a dangerous home. They argue that more families should be included in the system to ensure this. The other side argues that the system should be abolished completely, arguing that it has racist roots and has a poor track record of keeping children alive, let alone growing after being separated from their parents. are.
We waste time and lives arguing over which side pays more butchers. The butcher’s bill is too high, oh well. Too many children are killed at the hands of their parents, and too many children are killed or otherwise destroyed by the systems meant to protect them. Now is the time to split the check down the middle and start fixing the multiple systems that need to be improved or rebuilt to support children and their families.
As a former U.S. Senate Senior Policy Advisor and Director with a track record of working across the aisle and getting results, I have listened to the rhetoric among these opposing voices in child welfare grow louder. Having worked on Capitol Hill for years, I can tell you that asking policymakers and their staff to choose between two different views is a losing strategy.
Why do policymakers invest political capital in fights between supporters when choosing sides will only get them bad press and lack of appreciation? The best anyone should hope for in these advocacy battles is milquetoast policy change that has no positive impact on the course of children and their families.
As adults, we have the ability to tell multiple truths at the same time. The current child welfare system as we know it crowds out many families who would be better served by other resources to raise, support, and build their families. By involving too many families in a hostile child protection system, we are unnecessarily tearing families apart and causing untold suffering to children and their families.
The current child welfare system not only fails to adequately protect children at immediate risk of harm, but also fails to treat, let alone prevent, harm to children once removed from their homes. I haven’t been able to do it. Too often we compound the suffering of already abused children.
Now is the time for all of us to act together and act differently while simultaneously holding these truths. Continuing to stay in the safe zone by short-sightedly focusing on or completely abolishing the child welfare system that we believe it should be will not solve the problems faced by children and their families. It doesn’t mean that you do it.
First and foremost, families need access to safe housing and child care as a starting point to succeed. Additionally, families struggling with addiction and mental illness need access to services designed to keep families safe and together while their parents receive treatment.
For children who are abused or who are unsafe to be with their families, we will improve behavioral and mental health systems to address the abuse they have endured and We must ensure access to timely, accessible, and consistent evidence-based treatment for the abuse endured. We will make significant improvements to the homes and residential treatment centers where we place our children in the name of safety and security.
Traversing other systems such as Medicaid, behavioral and mental health, child care, housing, workforce training, and juvenile justice is neither an easy nor a comfortable task. But better connecting child welfare to these systems, and making the necessary changes to them, will address two truths we have: needlessly tearing far too many families apart and further compounding the pain of abuse. This is the only way to solve the complex and multi-layered problem that we are experiencing. Children can be harmed by not receiving treatment or by exacerbating the abuse once they are in care.
