Last week saw the publication of two assessments of what’s wrong with child welfare in Rhode Island. Both missed the point.
On May 12, Kayla David, a vice president of a foster care agency, wrote a commentary for Rhode Island Current suggesting foster parents need more support in order to improve recruitment and retention because, she said, there’s a shortage of such parents.
The next day the state’s “Child Advocate” released a report that included some of the most horrifying cases of child abuse in Rhode Island since 2019. Some of the solutions offered were useful, such as bolstering drug treatment. But many of them were not, such as building more institutions. The Rhode Island House Committee on Oversight is scheduled to hear a presentation on the report on Wednesday.
In both cases, the authors ignored the elephant in the room, the problem at the root of all the others: Rhode Island’s fanatical devotion to tearing apart families. …
