● The Chronicle of
Social Change takes an in-depth look
at how two “Rising Voices For ‘Family Power’ Seek to Abolish The Child Welfare
System.”
● I’ve previously
written about how child welfare agencies play the “bonding card” – they
take children needlessly then stall and stall and stall and then say: Well, too
bad, the white middle-class foster parents are “the only family the child has
ever known.” Now, with the Indian Child
Welfare Act under challenge in the courts, Prof. Matthew L.M. Fletcher, director
of the Indigenous Law and Policy Center at Michigan State University, writes in
High Country News about “How
the ‘only family’ argument is used against Indigenous families.”
● Child welfare’s number one number cruncher, Prof. Robert
Latham of the University of Miami Law School, examines
the data on racial disparities in Florida child welfare – and also
challenges the common excuses for such disparities. He writes:
We also know foster care is a system of inequity because, while there are lots of privileged people seeking to make it unavoidable for other families, they are not simultaneously demanding access to the system for their own kids. Families need community safety, good physical and mental health, social support, material wealth, and political power to create better lives. If you have that, you don’t need [The Florida Department of Children and Families]. Nobody calls DCF to put their child in foster care for a few days while they go on a business trip, and there is no Operation Varsity Blues for rich people trying to scam their kids into care. That’s because foster care is not a good thing.
● And Truthout has
a transcript and video of a webinar called “Abolish
Policing – Not Just the Police” which discusses the harm done by all sorts
of police agencies, including child protective services.
