● Racism in child welfare isn’t just a matter of caseworkers jumping to conclusions when they know the family they are investigating is Black, serious as that problem is. So it isn’t something that can be fixed only with anti-bias training or even smart, necessary innovations such as “blind removal meetings.” It’s a matter of scholars with the best of intentions allowing racial bias to worm its way in, even in places where no one — well, none of us who is white — might have expected – such as a prestigious scientific study purporting to measure the rate of child abuse in America. NCCPR in Youth Today on how “In Child Welfare the Racial Bias is Everywhere -- Even in the Research.”
● University of
Pennsylvania Professor Dorothy Roberts literally wrote the book on racism in
child welfare (Shattered
Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare).
Prof. Roberts, a member of NCCR’s Board of Directors, spoke
to Rise about why “Abolition is The Only Answer.” Prof. Roberts will be speaking tonight at the Rise
15th Anniversary (virtual)
celebration. Also speaking: Rep. Gwen Moore, (D-Wis.), author of
the #stoptheclock
bill to suspend timelines under the so-called Adoption and Safe Families
Act during a public health crisis.
● The revelation that parents
can’t be found for 545 children torn from them at the Mexican border by the
Trump administration has put that kind of family separation back in the
news. But don’t let it obscure the other
kind of family separation – the kind that happens 250,000 times every
year. The motivation behind that kind of
family separation is different, but the trauma inflicted on the children is the
same – and it’s almost always unnecessary. I
have a post about it on this blog.
● Remember the NBC
News exposes about “Residential Treatment Centers” run by an outfit known as Sequel? Remember the Philadelphia
Inquirer expose about
residential treatment centers run by Devereux?
Remember the Salt Lake Tribune expose of “Utah’s
troubled teen industry”?
Now, let’s welcome Texas
to the residential treatment hall of shame, thanks to this
outstanding work by Roxanna Asgarian writing for Texas Observer and The
Imprint.
One parallel is particularly
striking. The Inquirer story
included this stunning admission from Devereux’s Senior Vice President and
Chief Strategy Officer Leah Yaw:
“This is not an
aberration that happens at Devereux because of some kind of lack of control or structure. This is an industry-wide problem.”
Now look at what Will Francis, executive director of the
Texas chapter of the National Association of Social Workers told Asgarian:
“Any time you put a kid in an RTC, you are probably
expecting some level of abuse. And that’s heartbreaking. We need to rethink
where our dollars go. We need to stop putting them towards these warehouses.”
Asgarian’s story also documents how Texas authorities routinely turn a blind eye to abuse at RTCs – something to keep in mind when apologists for tearing apart families mislead you with official figures purporting to show that the rate of abuse in substitute care supposedly is low. (Extensive research says otherwise.)
So, at long last, can we at least agree that anyone who uses the words “rotten apples” and “residential treatment” in the same sentence – except to deride the idea – should not be trusted?
As
for why so much excellent journalism hasn’t done much good, it’s because no one
is willing to face up to what it will really take to fix the problem. I suggest
some answers in
this column for The Imprint.
