Comment by stephen_g
2 years ago
Amazing that bit about child welfare organisations fighting against the science, when clearly taking children away based on false accusations is clearly far worse for the child’s welfare, not to mention the parents’!
It’s just incredible the injustice that can be done in the name of protecting children. I really do wonder if it’s cultural or some kind of innate psychological irrarionality that seems stronger in some than others. I love kids and care deeply about their welfare, but people sometimes try to make me feel bad or that I’m the weird one for being able to think (I believe) fairly rationally about the risks and dangers that they face, instead of massively over-exaggerating!
Or of course the opposite, keeping an appropriate eye on relations and acquaintances when people assume they’re totally safe but it’s actually somebody with that level of relation who’s likely to be a danger than a stranger.
> Amazing that bit about child welfare organisations fighting against the science, when clearly taking children away based on false accusations is clearly far worse for the child’s welfare, not to mention the parents’!
This is just speculation, but I bet those groups (or their members) aren't always calmly and coolly trying to find the best policies protect the welfare of children. Instead they feel themselves on a kind of righteous moral crusade, and what's more heroic than swooping in to take the child away from the clutches of the villain? The feelings of heroism could obscure understanding the harm the "heroic act" could cause.
There's another factor in this, which makes it hard to change:
For the people in child welfare organizations, for social workers, for doctors, for police, for judges to change their mind about current and future decisions requires them to change their mind about past decisions. The necessary implication is that many of the people they have persecuted in the past were, in fact, innocent. It requires them to admit that they personally have likely caused untold suffering to parents, caretakers, and children.
This is hard for anyone; but if you've lived your life trying to be the hero, feeling good about swooping in and rescuing children from the clutches of evil villains, how can you face the fact that you are the evil villain in so many children's stories?
You might call this the Paradox of Judgment: If you don't say that something is that bad, then lots of people don't think it's a big deal and don't do anything about it. But if you do say that something is really bad, then there develop all these pathologies of denialism around it.
This is spot on. This psychological barrier is probably the number one obstacle to a wider recognition of the existence and extent of this problem.
People like me who challenge the science behind the diagnoses of SBS face an absolutely unprecedented and unreasonable pushback, like I've never seen in any other area. Basically everyone who has worked on this side has faced threats, insults, personal attacks, cancellations, boycotts, and so on. The "cognitive bias" you mention (does it have a name? perhaps cognitive dissonance?) is a likely reason for this amount of antagonism.
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It's hard to understand something if your salary depends on it being false.
It's much, much harder again to understand something if it makes your life's work ignoble.
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Interestingly enough, no bigger offender then the psychiatric and mental health community. There's a very sophisticated system for shutting down criticism and lashing out at patients that have civil rights concerns.
They do a lot of mental gymnastics trying to run from the idea that their main function is to imprison and take away peoples rights, often without due process.
Medical industry is rife with abuse. They routinely kill people out of spite, torture dying people and their families, and want to be shielded from any criticism... so fuck all the patients and look for reasons they're "not righteous", etc, so you can dismiss them.
It's quite interesting (and disturbing) to see how much culture evolves around deflecting blame and victim blaming.
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There's also the normalization of seeing and hearing awful things. After a while of being exposed to the wretches of humanity you begin to see the signals for the wretches everywhere.
As the warrior poet Maslow put it, "if the only tool you ever have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail."
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Thanks for this insight, I'd never thought about it this way.
> they feel themselves on a kind of righteous moral crusade
They see a lot of bad stuff which causes them to have a difficult time admitting that sometimes bad stuff just happens on it's own
Reminds me of the police/detectives that "just know he did it" because they don't understand that people grieve differently. I really empathize with the people that don't have a meltdown and cry when they hear some horrific news. I don't think I would either in many cases. I'd want the cops to do their job and go find the perp so I'd talk to them in a calm and concise manner telling them what I knew; even though that's likely highly suspicious behavior.
That actually happened to me, not with the police though, but with social workers. I explained the situation in a very calm, concise, and perhaps emotionally detached manner because this is just my personality. They wrote in their report that they found it strange that "I almost did not cry during the interview", which they said was the main reason they would recommend to put David in foster care. The guilt of knowing that I, with my personality, was responsible for losing his care, was devastating.
I also found this argument absurd: I was suspected of losing my temper on my child, and it's my calmness that was interpreted as a sign of danger!
It reminds me the Robert Roberson Texas death penalty case that John Grisham recently wrote about [1]: "He told hospital staff that she had fallen out of bed, but they didn’t believe him. They didn’t know he was autistic and decided he didn’t show the proper emotions given the dire situation."
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-may-execute-a-man-based-o...
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It gets really obvious when this becomes not just a matter of personal experience but culture. Had the fortune to watch the news about an airplane crash without survivors on a TV channel in Asia. They had a video of grieving relatives from Western Europe who looked utterly gutted and in pain. But since they werent crying and screaming the news anchor had to explain that this was cultural differences.
I work in child welfare in Australia. Not sure how it compares to the models in other countries, but we desperately try not to remove child from their families. There is very little evidence to support it improves outcomes for those children, and the removing itself is highly horrific for everyone involved. Even in the instances we remove children, we actively attempt to work with the parents to address the issue. We are also beholden to the Courts to justify our decision making.
The harm we cause is better explained by systematic reasons (workload, case complexity, red tape, worker burnout and apathy, racism)
What happens if the cops are called, rather than child services?
This is how I ended up in foster care over a false accusation against my parents (in the US). I'm told that if the accuser had called child services directly, they would have done their investigation first and only taken me if they determined I was in danger (which I was not).
But because the accuser called the cops instead, the cops took me without investigating first and handed me over to child services. Thus I spent the entire investigation period in foster care, until a judge ordered me to be sent back to my family. Even though they failed to produce any evidence of abuse, it still took many months.
It was an extremely traumatizing and harrowing experience (honestly even harder on me and my parents than when my brother got sick and died) and remains the worst thing I have ever experienced. But I find it hard to even talk about because people tend to assume that if a child is seized from a home, the parents must have been abusive. (My parents are extremely not abusive, not even in the mildest sense of the word.)
What's fucked is that I actually know two other families who went through this exact same experience: false accuser calls the cops, the cops give the kid to child services, child services puts the kid in foster care while investigating, the investigation turns up no evidence of abuse, the court forces child services to send the kid home, and the kid finally returns home with lifelong trauma.
Yeah in my dealings with child welfare workers (in America at least), they are the first to understand how "the system", and they as a key component, can cause harm.
In America the system is split between people who say we should do everything we can to keep children safe in their own home, and people who think it is wokeness gone mad that a parent can test positive for drugs and not have the kids immediately removed. It is, as you’d expect, a calm and reasonable debate filled with claims that “I’m the only one who is thinking about the best interest of the kids!” and “you hate foster care so much you prefer babies to DIE instead of going to a safe foster home!” (As a foster parent, I have unfortunately found that this kind of idiocy is all too common among foster parents.)
How does this play out in Aboriginal communities?
In the US we have strict laws regarding how social services interact with native populations.
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> and what's more heroic than swooping in to take the child away from the clutches of the villain?
In a (somewhat) post-scarcity society attention from others is hard currency and narcissism is at an all time high.
This is true, but not for the reasons you might expect. Well, 10% of the time this is the case, but 90% ...
Mostly they are operating on priors. The prior probability of a separation being the right thing to do is very high, because they have a _long list of mitigation before they actually can take a kid away. In the case of a doctor-approved immediate physical danger, they are regulated into acting on behalf of the immediate safety of the child while the investigation is ongoing but even that is considered temporary.
The goal of any foster care situation is to get the kids back with the biological parents, so time is on their side, provided they are not living in a circumstance that disallows the kind of attendance and involvement that the state would require to clear a caseworker to re-unite the family. Sadly, many are.
Source: Foster parent.
Priors should never, ever factor into it like this.
I was a foster child who was taken from my parents wrongly. A third party (not connected to child services) made a false accusation to the cops, who took me and turned me over to child services without any investigation. Even though I insisted nothing had happened and even though child services failed to produce any evidence (beyond aforesaid hearsay) over the course of their investigation, child services nonetheless fought extremely hard against letting me go home to my family.
In the end, a judge had to order them to return me to my family because they refused to accept that the accusation had been a lie.
In the meantime, I went through three different foster homes. I was a very difficult kid to foster (I cried and screamed a lot, demanding to go home) and so I unfortunately experienced abuse and neglect in two of the three homes. (My first foster home was particularly severe, which was strange because they were otherwise great parents to their biological kids. At least the other abusive home treated their real children equally poorly.)
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I suspect that was the motivation for Apple's iPhone client-side scanning and reporting of CSAM feature and the subsequent hard push for it.
That is a point - and also, while I'm sure many are just misguided, and I generally don't want to assume malice when ignorance is a more likely cause, it is certainly interesting that some high-profile people on these 'heroic moral crusades' do then seem to get caught up in sexual misconduct scandals of their own surprisingly frequently...
It is easy to think bad things of others that you know to be true of yourself.
Another example is that a lot of anti-gay crusaders turned out to be closet gays who hated themselves.
Exactly. I met many people like this. The notion of groupthink comes to mind: "Unquestioned belief in the morality of the group, causing members to ignore the consequences of their actions."
See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink
Do you ( or anyone else ) have an idea about how to deal with that? Not just on a group level but also on an individual one?
The willful ignorance of the dissonance between proclaimed intention and consequences is one of the scariest phenomenons i have experienced and its among proper mob mentality turning in a charged violence prone environment.
Being a bit of a smartass (OFCOURSE just as a teen :) i prodded a bit when some family friend got into some superficial moral signaling about the evils of child labor. I asked how exactly the alternative looks without social safety nets in the relevant regions. Being convinced of having the moral high ground an emotional fever set in and it went as far as a "Well maybe then they should all starve!". Pretty sure i saw the realization of what i just goaded out and if hateful stares could kill i would have been a goner. It has been almost two decades now and the relationship has never recovered. I know some seriously scary people but this is up there.
edit: Sorry for the late edits, was hard to read.
This always seems to happen to activist groups. They start mistaking their intermediate goals for ‘the cause’ and next thing you know, they’re actively fighting against solutions to their alleged issues because those solutions would impact their self-selected KPIs.
"We need to take away your kid because um.. DEUS VULT."
My theory is that emotionally charged issues seem like a haven for people not thinking clearly and cover for hand waving or opposing any thoughtful analysis.
I think there are people drawn to the absolutes. I can maybe see how it can be comforting to have a black and white issue to try to solve / help. A good side to be a part of in a world that to some seems very bad or confusing.
Some old friends of mine are very much into these kinds of children’s issues. But when they talk to you about it it’s all emotion, it’s not even clear to me that they know much at all other than a sense that the bad guys are out there, maybe some strange legislation they support and so on. They’re not interested in justice, just this absolute sorta cause.
I agree. This is clearly visible in trials where emotion plays a big part. An innocent childminder being charged with murder can't really compete with the extraordinarily charged testimony of grieving, devastated and sincere parents who have been made to believe in the strongest way possible that she killed their baby.
Yes, this happens because most of us are unconsciously repeating our own histories.
My sense is it's important to keep in back-of-mind that there is a massive selection effect involved in terms of which people chose to enter these fields and what sorts of personal life events (trauma, abuse, witnessing of abuse etc) motives choosing to make this a career. These are not well-paid careers (nor are they high-status) so money and status are typically not motivations (in fact a relative of an in-law works in a closely-related field and we talk at Thanksgiving-type family events about work and their employers often seem to me to be exploiting their investment in the field). I think it's why it can be so difficult to discuss it with them, it is deeply personal and they feel the "system" failed in the past and they want it fixed.
Anyway, it's not meant as an ad hom, but it helps to step back and think why people are involved with certain roles.
To be clear: here the author only bothered look with his well-trained eyes because he was sucked in after the law intruded into his life. It's easy to assume that everyone is highly-skilled. But... highly-skilled people don't usually choose to work for peanuts without other reasons. Fields like this are neglected.
It seems like there is still significant disagreement with this guy's argument in "the science", at least as best as any individual child welfare employee would understand it. There are no doubt specialist doctors, general practitioners, etc. telling the child welfare folks that it's as clear cut a diagnosis as you could get.
The fact of the matter is, the article here is a brief overview describing none of the actual scientific literature at a level that should be convincing to a medical practitioner. But you read it and are apparently convinced of the author's point. So, a layperson (I assume, in your case) is presented with some well-written evidence from an authoritative perspective, alongside broad contours of the actual medical evidence but no details, and is convinced that it's true. Is it so hard to believe that a child welfare worker would be equally convinced under the same circumstances when talking to a doctor, neurologist, trauma surgeon, etc. who believes the opposite as this author?
The “passion” goes beyond this specific issue. Child abuse specialist doctors have come to some sketchy conclusions, only to have the system cover for them.
Part of the issue is they exist in several systems simultaneously: medical system, child-welfare system, and criminal justice system.
Are they there to cure disease, ensure the child had a safe home environment, or put an abuser in prison. Answer: all of the above.
Here’s a good example:
https://wisconsinwatch.org/2022/01/alaska-couple-loses-custo...
There's a bias in favor of action, especially among the social workers that I have known. The worst possible sin is to do nothing at all.
In cases like this, in the moment, it may be impossible to tell what is actually best for the child. Since removing the child is a form of remediation, it can easily seem to be less harmful than leaving them in a situation that might be actively harming them.
> It’s just incredible the injustice that can be done in the name of protecting children. I really do wonder if it’s cultural or some kind of innate psychological irrarionality that seems stronger in some than others. I love kids and care deeply about their welfare, but people sometimes try to make me feel bad or that I’m the weird one for being able to think (I believe) fairly rationally about the risks and dangers that they face, instead of massively over-exaggerating!
Everyone cares about kids, so THINK OF THE CHILDREN is an easy way to both create false urgency to cover totalitarianism and also an excellent shame-generator to suppress protest. C.f. "Drag shows"; "digital privacy"
It's part of the contract cult mechanism. Human tribes for a early version of law by forming contract cults aka religions. For that sexual deviants are hearded into a group to which the family is then ritualistically exposed as a sort of hostage situation that upholds basic providing and welfare contracts. The hysteria is a social fitness signal: "I'm reliably retarded and can be used as a social building block". This is pretty cultural universal, though the cultural baggage with the contact cult may produce different outcomes.
This concept of "the science" we've converged on a culture really doesn't make a ton of sense. What does it mean to say "the science" is against a position that many relevant experts hold? To the extent that there is such a thing as "the science", the book the author is advertising (https://shakenbaby.science/) is pretty frank that its goal is to argue against it: there's a traditional medical consensus in favor of SBS/AHT, but it's become more controversial, and if you read this book you too will be convinced that it's wrong.
> It’s just incredible the injustice that can be done in the name of protecting children
Whatever it is:
- If it's in the name of protecting the children, odds are it is not justice.
- If it is not justice, at some point the excuse will be to protect the children
> - If it is not justice, at some point the excuse will be to protect the children
I don't think this is a very solid maxim. It seems to imply things other than justice can only occur if protecting children is a claimed motive.
My hunch would be:
1. Premise: Organizations always try to stay alive. 2. To stay alive you have to be active and doing things which is rewarded by future money. 3. If your organizational role is "protect children" but who's functional mechanism is to take them away will look for ways to do that.
Similar things happen when policing seems to go awry, if they confuse "protect the public" (goal) with "arrest people for stuff" (doing something)
I have some inside information on how this plays out in Ontario, Canada, at least. One of my family members was a lawyer for the regional Children's Aid, and I worked for him for a few years. Another family member was a child protection social worker for two decades, but retired early because they felt the organization didn't prioritize the welfare of children (as is their mandate) but rather the needs of the organization or (perhaps more realistically) the needs of their own careers.
MANY social workers feel this way. They got into the field out of a genuine concern for the well-being of the most vulnerable members of our society, and instead found themselves dealing with politics (both real and office).
I'm not sure how it is in other countries, but in my region, they actually appoint a lawyer for the child. This is great, but it also tells you a lot about what everyone else's priorities are that children need their own lawyers:
(1) Parents want their kids back, of course. Not all parents are fit to get them back. But their lawyers fight for the return of their kids regardless of circumstances or reasons for their removal.
(2) Child protection agencies are under constant attack, so at the executive level, they lose sight of the individual kids and are instead worried about the needs of the organization and public relations.
(3) The social workers themselves are handcuffed to do anything about it and have to follow procedure, even if they can see it plainly that the procedure is not in the best interests of the child.
(4) Police want nothing to do with any of it and are quick to wash their hands of these situations.
(5) The children's lawyer somehow has to represent the needs of the child, which may place them at odds with their own clients (the kids).
(6) Activist groups will generally support the parents blindly, because by law, for the privacy of the children, the only parties listed above who can publicly speak about any given case are the parents themselves. So you can only ever hear one side of the argument. That's right: If a father, for example, sexually abuses his kids and as a result has them removed, he's free to say just about anything he likes about the matter, without ever acknowledging that he's a child molester. The other parties can't say a thing about this.
As a result, it's impossible, as a member of the public, to ever know whether it was appropriate or not that the children were removed from the care of their parents. I happen to know, from first-hand experience, that it's a mixed bag: Some parents shouldn't be allowed anywhere near any child ever, much less their own. Others are victims of a system gone haywire. And we, the concerned public, can't have an informed discussion about any of it.
All in all, it transforms child protection into a game of who-has-the-best-lawyers rather than trying to do what's right for the kids. Is it any wonder so many kids end up traumatized by this system?
Baby-stealing is a deep drive.
>I really do wonder if it’s cultural or some kind of innate psychological irrarionality that seems stronger in some than others.
CPS is a human organization. There are no algorithms and the guidelines rarely perfectly fit the situation a case worker is given. Keep this in mind. CPS is horrifically under funded meaning that intelligent and competent staff readily leave the field for better paying gigs.
The biggest problem I see with foster care at large is the rampant classism, sexism, racism, and other isms. The providers tend to be solidly middle class degree bearing people who have no personal connection to primary instigating factors of foster care involvement. Namely and typically presenting cross generationally: poverty, crimes of despair or desperation, and trauma whether that be internal or external to the family unit or community such as neighborhood violence, caregiver assault, or tragic loss.
It easy for providers to casually profile incoming children and their families as poor uneducated violent predacious drug dealing junkies. Providers are given extreme control over the entire family and their extended relations and use this power to coerce whatever behavior they desire out of the people. If the provider dislikes the family they have a lot of tools to inflict suffering on them and oppositely they have a lot of tools to assist families and keep them together.
Honestly, the entire system is such a god damn mess that it should be rebuilt with the same level of distrust of staff that they can exercise against families.
Perhaps the most pressing single metric to focus may be the foster to prison pipeline.
Sorry for the meandering post, bookcases could be filled with anecdotes and descriptions of the flaws in these systems. In general, I think the failure of child protection agencies reflects the decay in America at large. I could point to stuff like broken family units or loss of religions community but I’m not dog whistling here. Stable healthy nurturing familial units of any relation are obviously better but man in the house rules and other racist/classist measures caused more harm. I’m also vehemently opposed to all major organized religions that are regularly used to justify war and protect child sex predators. Perhaps the collapse of American industry and slow erosion of social safety nets has hastened the social collapse. Perhaps the internet had instigated the collapse of communal organizations. Perhaps winner take all government enforced monopoly capitalism is the cause. Perhaps it was the theft of 50,000,000,000.00 from the bottom 99 by the 1% that lead to this. Regardless, the solution is not going to be found in rebuilding foster care when our social fabric is rotten.
0. https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/sop2.10
1. https://www.crimlawpractitioner.org/post/the-foster-care-to-....
3. https://nlihc.org/resource/study-examines-man-house-rules-vo...
4. https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-ameri...