Comment by spwa4
3 months ago
> an unsupervised child could invite a call from CPS
Unfortunately, that's a correct assessment.
Of course CPS goes after such children IF AND ONLY IF they have been raised well. Why? They are paid per child and that's the only way for them to get access to a child that doesn't destroy the place, or worse, the people. Leaving an obviously well-behaved child unsupervised gives them an excuse to use in court, and an easy child to whose life gets destroyed ... but they get money and jobs (and parents that they can "prove" aren't good)
> We can be good parents again
Nope. The state would never let us. You can mitigate this problem by having a lot of kids (minimum 3), in rapid succession, at which point there's a bit of a society at home. But you cannot fix society.
>Of course CPS goes after such children IF AND ONLY IF they have been raised well. Why? They are paid per child and that's the only way for them to get access to a child that doesn't destroy the place, or worse, the people. Leaving an obviously well-behaved child unsupervised gives them an excuse to use in court, and an easy child to whose life gets destroyed ... but they get money and jobs (and parents that they can "prove" aren't good)
Is there any evidence of a systematic problem - nation wide no less - that its happening like this?
Because I know social workers, many of whom who work for child protective services (or their equivalent depending on state / county / city) and the constant story I hear is they are so understaffed they are overwhelmed with cases. They don't get enough funding as it is, and I have yet to hear a story that wouldn't make any decent person's skin crawl.
Well adjusted kids in good situations are not on their radar
Of this in particular? Except that absolutely everybody in the system knows, not really.
But there are plenty of studies that point out that foster care, any form, is on average worse than facing abuse at home. Group homes are FAR worse than abuse at home. A huge one is here:
https://nccpr.org/the-evidence-is-in-foster-care-vs-keeping-...
The implication of this is, of course, doing nothing about abuse at all is superior to the current CPS system. This should NOT be understood as "child abuse doesn't matter". No. It has strong negative effects on children. However, CPS has strongER negative effects on children.
This is a different tact than your original assertion. The child welfare system as a whole in the US is abysmal. Its severely understaffed, underfunded, and neglected in ways that would turn any decent persons stomach.
With that, I agree.
What I specifically posit however, is that CPS workers generally are not targeting well adjusted children in good homes. Even this organization you link to doesn't posit this.
What I do see here, and perhaps the NCCPR has a point, is that there should be better definitions of when a child should be taken from their home vs other types of interventions, because the foster care system in this country is truly terrible. Namely, they seem to be advocating for intervention policies on direct harm vs indirect harm, where indirect harm is defined as things like insufficient food, clothing, shelter or supervision. By shifting this definition the NCCPR argues that kids in real danger would get the attention they deserve and it would ease the burden on the child welfare system because less children would end up in the system, and stem the tide of reports and therefore resources used per investigation etc.
The tl;dr I get from the NCCPR's website as well as this interview about its work[0] (and the director) is the legal standard is too loose to be useful and should be better defined to significantly reduce the rate of false positives
Given the realistic chances of significant reform in the US around child welfare, I think maybe the NCCPR has a point, I'll explore that further, but its not that CPS workers are snatching well adjusted children from good homes. I see no evidence of that
[0]: https://www.npr.org/2023/11/30/1211781955/deluged-child-welf...
1 reply →
> Of course CPS goes after such children IF AND ONLY IF they have been raised well.
Why do you believe this?
Experience, both as a child and a parent.
Also, I have actually seen care homes from the inside. You will not find violent children there, despite the fact that they should obviously be the main group. You will also not find real problem children, because they get removed when they commit a crime or self-harm. Not because they don't need help (obviously). To protect the place from liability and costs. Obviously eventually kids DO, out of desperation, commit crimes or self-harm. Because behaving will guarantee that you stay there, destroying the place or the people and, suddenly, "you're OK now".
This seems too cynical to me. I think child protection services (by whatever name in whatever country) do genuinely care about kids' welfare. They just believe a lot of incorrect things about how to improve it.
I believed that about social workers until my partner disclosed she was having postpartum at the doctor's office and the social worker proceeded to pick her apart because our son was wearing mismatched socks. Meanwhile all of the parents in the group she's created all do that occasionally.
>This seems too cynical to me. I think child protection services (by whatever name in whatever country) do genuinely care about kids' welfare.
Individuals who work for such an agency may care about kids. They are human after all, humans often care (though not always). But an agency is a different beast, and is at best apathetic. They can be certainly be cruel, but never really kind. They can be hateful, but never loving. Agencies would cease to exist if they could express virtue, but they often thrive when expressing vice. This is not cynicism, just an understanding of the dynamics of groups of people. Virtue is maladaptive at those scales, it does not provide survival advantage.
This is not so much what matters. A child is fundamentally a learning system. How do you screw up a learning system? You dole out punishments and rewards based on things the learning system has no influence over. Good behavior randomly leads to rewards or punishment. Bad behavior randomly leads to reward or punishment. Random from the perspective of the child (obviously no other perspective matters for the child's development)
A fundamental property of any agency is that better or worse circumstances depend on availability ONLY. Availability of everything. Budget most of all, of course, but availability of "in-network" foster families, availability of foster parents determines if you get stuck in a group home or not. Whether you stay near your school. Group home availability determines if you get stuck in a short term group home or elsewhere (and thus have to move every 2 weeks for years). Occasionally foster kids are held literally in prison.
The reasons can be as valid or idiotic as you want, if they're not predictable AND under the influence of the child it will have disastrous effects on the psyche of the child.
And, frankly, this is rational: why should a foster child care about a society where an agency rips it out of it's family but doesn't provide a better alternative? What exactly do you expect to happen when that is done?
The only way CPS could theoretically function well is with 20%, 30% spare capacity that deliberately goes unused (which is the normal situation in families I might add. Parents aren't down to their last dollar. Parents aren't overloaded with kids. Even a drunkard dad is predictable, and if you can avoid them at the correct times ... Even an addict mom is predictable)