Comment by no_wizard
19 days ago
>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...
> 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
I'm over 45 now. "realistic chances of significant reform", in 35 or so years it got worse and worse, and worse, aside from very temporary upticks with a new building or something like a particularly bad worker leaving, and HUGE sudden negative effects (policies from above, suicide, "incidents"). What the study says is: it has long passed the point that if the system didn't exist at all, that would have been better for abused children, not worse. That point was already passed 35 years ago.
(which does imply that CPS workers are snatching children, btw, since they are not improving those children's lives. And CPS workers know that better than anyone)
> but its not that CPS workers are snatching well adjusted children from good homes. I see no evidence of that
They always have some excuse (usually divorce + fights between ex-partners, or school issues that are 100% the school's fault. Not something a child can do anything about, which is incredibly bad for their psyche, see attachment theory), so I guess you could say not perfectly well adjusted.
And these are "unintended consequences". Maladjusted children "fight themselves home". Either literally, through self harm or even through medical costs (that can mean actual cost, or something like epilepsy that necessitates 24/7/365 presence of an adult or the child WILL die. It's just a matter of time. People forget the frustration of that. An epilepsy patient takes one step forward, slowly, with INCREDIBLE effort, then falls 10 steps back. There is nothing whatsoever that can be done about that. Nothing you do will ever make any difference for more than a few days. Oh, and when the "mal" happens, odds are pretty good at least once that kid will hit you SO hard THEIR OWN bones break, in addition to yours. Best of luck holding on to those "good intentions")
(I put "good intentions" in scare quotes because if you can't keep doing it for at least a year or so, you're not helping)
Even when parents fight, physically, CPS. CPS workers hide their name (even judges now), but of course it's easy to find who they are. If a parent fights ... literally, their children are returned. If you press one of those therapists they'll say something like "it's not worth it", and send the child home.
Why? The state's failure in the child welfare system is not just failing to provide for the children. The state fails everyone and everything. Including protecting CPS workers or the workers in CPS group homes. Including also failing to protect those children against each other or outsiders (theft), but that, absolutely nobody cares about that, ever.
Who remains? Well adjusted children that regularly get extreme damage done to them by being in CPS. Most of all by never being allowed to stay in one place, even to finish a school semester.