More than 20 years ago, the journal of the Child Welfare League of America devoted an entire issue to the problem of children removed to foster care or trapped there because their families didn’t have adequate housing. The issue noted that three separate studies found that at least 30% of foster children could be home right now if their families had adequate housing.
A fourth was even more disturbing. If found that child protective caseworkers were, to use one of their own favorite phrases, in denial, concerning the extent of the problem. The study found that workers “may tend to ignore housing as a problem rather than deal with the cognitive dissonance caused by the recognition that they cannot help their clients with this important need.”
Perhaps that’s why, in the Current’s stories on this issue,
while I read comment after comment about how it might be a “filthy house” that
may lack heat or air conditioning and may have “toddlers crawling around the
floor,” never once was such a comment followed by “so we sent in a cleaning
crew” or, “so we bought them an air conditioner.” After all, what would be the
point if the “real” problem is mental illness or substance abuse? ...
