Probably not. But the bill reveals how little lawmakers know about how child welfare really works.
The update dealt with how
governments would be allowed to spend $2 billion in additional federal funds.
But there’s another intriguing
provision of the bill. It’s called “Requirement for De-escalation Strategies
Relating to Interactions With Law Enforcement Authorities.” It requires
governments to
(A) develop and implement de-escalation strategies to—
(i) reduce unnecessary interactions with law enforcement authorities for children, youth, and families coming to the attention of child welfare agencies and for children and youth in foster care; …
(iii) ensure that any involvement of law enforcement authorities in child abuse or neglect investigations, child welfare interventions, placement incidents, or court or administrative proceedings involving children or youth in foster care, is not coercive or intended to intimidate …
But there’s a problem: There are
places in the United States where law enforcement is in charge of all child
abuse investigations. In Nebraska, law
enforcement performs initial investigations and decides whether or not to
remove children. That also is the case
in six Florida counties.
There is no action government can
take against a family that is more coercive than tearing it apart and
consigning the children to the chaos of foster care. The threat of such action
is pretty intimidating. And almost all
interaction between child abuse investigators and families is unnecessary since
at least 80 percent of all reports they
investigate – and probably far more – are
false.
So if federal law were to prohibit
law enforcement from doing anything unnecessary, coercive or intimidating
during a child abuse investigation, law enforcement could no longer lead child
abuse investigations.
Of course even if such a bill
became law – and it almost certainly won’t – the investigations wouldn’t really
stop. At most, they would be transferred back to state or local child
protective services agencies. But
Florida’s record suggests that would make no difference.
In Florida the change was made with
the hope that it would lead to more children being taken from their families.
The theory was that hardnosed cops wouldn’t be “fooled” by those awful parents
who could sucker bleeding heart caseworkers.
In fact, when the transition was
pending I heard such hopes – or fears, depending on who was expressing them --
and I said at the time nothing would really change. At this time Florida was in the midst of one
of its periodic foster-care panics. Workers already were rushing to tear apart
families needlessly; turning over the job to people who might have some concept
of things like “evidence” wasn’t going to make things worse.
Although it’s been a while since
I’ve checked, as far as I know that turned out to be correct. I know of no
pattern showing that counties where sheriffs do the investigating are more
likely to take away children than areas where the responsibility remains with
the Florida Department of Children and Families. They’re equally awful.
That’s something sponsors of this
bill, and all those rushing to suggest that money saved from defunding the police should be plowed into social work, need to understand. In child welfare, the caseworkers are the police. They exercise the ultimate coercive power
over another human being and they have more leeway to do it than the police who
wear blue uniforms.
Consider another
example from Florida: When law enforcement wanted to sneak into a home to
do a search for marijuana plants but couldn’t get a warrant, they pretended to
be DCF caseworkers because they knew the family wouldn’t dare keep them out!
As Professor Dorothy Roberts of the
University of Pennsylvania Law School, a member of NCCPR's Board of Directors has
written:
I am concerned by recommendations to transfer money, resources and authority from the police to health and human services agencies that handle child protective services (CPS). These proposals ignore how the misnamed “child welfare” system, like the misnamed “criminal justice” system, is designed to regulate and punish black and other marginalized people. It could be more accurately referred to as the “family regulation system.”
What we
really need are laws that force CPS agencies to de-escalate their own attacks
on families – attacks that often destroy children in order to “save” them.
