lisamoe

She posted this in her journal today, but some of the thoughts I was getting into while responding made me want to transfer it to my own journal...

A lot of my friends are very anti-government and specificaly, very anti-child welfare. Working there, I get pretty anti-government too and I get disgusted with the system. I think there are bad police, bad child welfare workers, bad teachers, etc. I also think there are some really crappy excuses for parents out there and you can't assume that just because someone says that they've done nothing wrong and are being harrassed by the man doesn't mean it's true. It's not rationally possible to believe that there are no children in this country today who aren't in need of some sort of protection from the people who allegedly love them. And since neighbors, communities, and other family member frequently don't step up to the plate for one reason or another, it's left to the government.

In the particular case in question in Maitresse's journal, I don't see anything that justifies DSS removing her children either. But I see things that justify checking to see if things are ok. What we don't know is what they found when they went to check. Perhaps they found an odd lady who was doing ok and they wrongly decided to be punitive anyway. Perhaps they found a woman having a psychotic break whose other children asked for help for themselves and the baby. I'm just saying that there's no way to tell from the story which of those, or anything in the middle, might be the case. I think that's a lot of the problem when you read this kind of thing in the newspapers. There simply isn't enough to go on, so you interpret it through your own filters. Because of your own political bent, you give the woman the benefit of the doubt reading about it, which is fine, but upon closer scrutiny, it might be that it isn't warranted when you get deeper into the facts. The thing is, there's no way to tell without more information.

Some of my friends may be surprised that I agree with Maitresse that too many children are picked up from parents who don't really deserve it. I believe the system breaks down frequently, for both children and parents. I believe that a lot of marginal families could use support and resources and in-home services, and in my own work that's been my focus. But I also wonder what you do about the parents who really are bad people if there's no system at all? There are people who burn babies with cigarettes, or kick a 6 year old in the stomach hard enough to cause organ damage, or who keep their children in meth labs, exposing them to toxic chemicals. (All cases on my caseload right now.) Do we abandon those children entirely for fear of accidentally harassing someone who doesn't deserve it? Or do we do our best to make the system work better? I think that's what I do. I think you could ask ANY parent on my caseload whether I've been fair and supportive and willing to listen to reason and I wouldn't have any fear of what they'd say.

In the three and a half years I investigated child welfare referrals (before I was doing what I'm doing now), I took into custody children from five families. One was an abandonment of five children with no relatives who could take them. One was a drug addicted baby born to a drug addicted street prostitute who had already given up two children. One was four small girls who were repeatedly raped by their father (who received several consecutive life sentences in criminal court for the abuse.) One was a two year old whose mother was a chronic alcoholic and would consistently leave him in her car all night outside bars while she drank herself unconscious and for whom we had tried to provide services several times before. And one was a toddler boy of drug addicts dropped off at the shelter with a note pinned to him. All my other confirmed cases ended up with referrals and services to keep the children in the home.

So which ones of those children should I have given back with no intervention?

I am an optimistic person and I hope people, including my clients, will do what they should. And I don't have a crystal ball to know how things will go in the future. But if you have enough history to go on and enough experience with similar cases, you can make an educated guess about what might happen and sometimes you just have to assume the worst because the consequences if you don't aren't something you're willing to live with.

I understand people's distrust of government agencies. I have a healthy dose of it myself. But I don't believe in anarchy either and I do believe that there are a lot of people out there in child protection jobs who are trying to do the best they can and are making difference in individual lives. Might I suggest, for anyone wanting some oversight over DHS/CPS, volunteering as a guardian ad litem or CASA for a child in the system might be better than trying to get the whole system shut down.

k' End of rant.