Nearly seven years ago, when
the northeast was hit with a snowstorm quickly dubbed “snowpocalypse” and
“snowmageddon,” The Daily Show used the
occasion to make fun of people who assume that their own personal experience has
more validity than actual science.
Starting at about 4:50 in this story, one
correspondent says global warming, as climate change used to be called,
must be a myth because right where he was standing at that very moment it was
very, very cold and it was snowing outside. Another correspondent says no,
global warming must be real because it’s very, very hot where she is – in Australia.
I think of this clip
whenever I read another column in which Marie Cohen says she just knows we should institutionalize more children,
because of what she personally saw during five whole years as a caseworker
–filtered, of course, through all her own biases – has more validity than
actual research.
An Orphanage is an Orphanage is an Orphanage
In her most recent column, she uses all sorts of euphemisms, but a salaried foster parent
is no different than a “house parent” in a group home. And a cluster of group
homes is an institution.
Cohen
calls this “a new vision,” but it’s about as new as a Dickens novel. They’re
just orphanages with new names.
To
promote this 19th century “new vision,” Cohen derides efforts to place children
with caregivers in their own communities. Her “evidence”:
I have seen such caregivers dip into the [foster care] stipend to pay their own expenses, run out of gas by the end of the month, fail to get children to appointments, and lead chaotic lifestyles similar to those of the families their wards were removed from.
In contrast to Cohen’s
personal experience, consider what actual research tells us: Kinship care is
better for children’s well-being, and safer than what
should properly be called “stranger care.” There’s this study. And this one. And the studies cited here. And here.
In addition, kinship care
parents are far less likely to resort to doping
up children on potent psychiatric medication when they become hard to
handle. In Florida, when foster children are placed with
strangers, whether in homes or institutions, nearly 19 percent of them are
medicated. But when foster children are placed in kinship care, only about five
percent are prescribed psychiatric meds.
Given
that relatives are more likely to be poor than stranger-care parents it’s
possible that, as Cohen suggests, they are more likely to run out of gas. But
they are less likely to run out of love.
Of course, Cohen doesn’t rely
only on her personal experience. As she has so often before, she promotes
institutions by showing us what they say about themselves on their own
websites. The perils of this approach should have been clear when Cohen gushed
about Maryville, near Chicago, years after it had been exposed as a hellhole. Now, she’s done it
again. This time she cites SOS Children’s Villages. She says that a “physical
community” like SOS is “a way to have more eyes on each family to make
sure there’s no abuse and neglect.”
But that’s not what
the South Florida Sun-Sentinel found
in 2002 when the newspaper exposed what it called the “ugly
realities” of the SOS facility there:
Records provided by the Broward County office of the Department of Children & Families show numerous incidents of child-on-child sexual activity; allegations of improper supervision of children; and frequent police involvement at SOS.
Of course defenders of
SOS would say: “Well, that was then, now we’re new and improved!” The problem
is that institutionalization in general has been proven – by that
pesky research again – to be a failure. And as long as such places exist
the cycle of descend into chaos – reform – repeat will
never end.
Cohen
goes on to tell us, again with only anecdotes for “evidence,” that “many”
foster parents “do it for the pay.” Even if that were true, there is a problem
with her solution: Pay foster parents much more money, she says, and fewer will
do it for the money.
Uh,
right.
Supply and Demand
But the
biggest failure in Cohen’s logic is the assumption that America has too few
foster parents. Rather, America has too many foster children.
Yes, foster care numbers
are increasing. But two-thirds of the increase since 2013 occurred in five states. At least four of
them – Arizona, Florida, Georgia and Minnesota – had foster-care
panics, spikes in removals of children due not to an actual increase
in maltreatment but due to intensive news coverage of deaths of children “known
to the system.”
In 2015 and 2016, there
as a similar spike in removals in Arkansas. But consultants hired by the state
found that the cause of the increase was not a spike in child abuse, it was
the culture of the child welfare agency and the courts.
The money Cohen wants to
lavish on strangers to care for other people’s children could be far better
spent on day care so birth parents aren’t charged with “lack of supervision,”
and rent subsidies, so children aren’t taken because of poor housing
conditions. It could even go to helping pay for gasoline so kinship caregivers
can get children to those appointments Cohen is so worried about – because God
forbid the caseworker ever has to drive the children herself.
If every state took away
children at the rate of say Alabama or Illinois – two states
where independent court monitors have found that an emphasis on family
preservation improved child safety, between 72,000 and 135,000 fewer children
would be taken away each year nationwide, and all vulnerable children would be
safer.
Foster
parent “shortage” solved.
