When family preservation is abandoned, children suffer. Often, child abuse deaths actually increase. We know this because, over and over again, high-profile child abuse deaths have led to “foster care panics” – sharp sudden increases in the number of children torn from their families. And we’ve seen the consequences of those panics. Read More

Opponents of family preservation have a lot of great applause lines. They are for “child protection,” they say. They are for “children’s rights,” they say. They are for “putting children first instead of families first,” they say. And over and over they tell us they’re “erring on the side of the child.” But in the name of “child protection” children have been beaten. In the name of “children’s rights,” children have been raped. And in the name of “erring on the side of the child,” children have been murdered. These are the stories of some of those children Read More

In previous issue papers, we discussed the danger of physical and sexual abuse inherent in curbing “reasonable efforts” and severely restricting or abolishing family preservation. But there is another danger that is even more widespread: the emotional abuse that often is an inevitable part of the investigation and placement process Read More

Far more common than a child who comes into care because he was beaten are children who come into foster care because the foodstamps ran out or because an illness went untreated after parents were kicked off Medicaid or because a mother could not provide adequate supervision while she worked. Read More

It is an article of faith among “child savers” that “child abuse crosses class lines.” They tell us that we are as likely to find maltreatment in rich families as in poor, but the rich can hide from authorities. But like most child saver “truisms,” this one is false. Read More

By the time they are 18, more than half of all Black children will be forced to endure the trauma of a child abuse investigation. Almost always, the report will be false or a case of poverty confused with neglect. Read More

They are the cases that horrify us the most – as they should: children killed by their own families in cases that were, in some way, “known to the system.” The knee-jerk response: Children known-to-the-system are dying so the answer must be to take away more children. In fact, that makes everything worse. Read More

Faced with overwhelming evidence of huge numbers of children needlessly placed in foster care — and what foster care was doing to these children, Congress passed a law in 1980 that included a clause requiring states and localities to make “reasonable efforts” to keep families together. … The law required “reasonable efforts” — not ridiculous efforts. And everybody knew it. But by 1997, the debate over “reasonable efforts” had taken an Orwellian turn. Read More

Family preservation does not mean what critics say it means. The term “family preservation” has a very specific meaning. It refers to a systematic determination of those families in which children could remain in their homes or be returned home safely, and provision of the services needed to help ensure that safety. Read More

Family preservation is one of the most intensively-scrutinized programs in all of child welfare. Several studies — and real world experience — show that Intensive Family Preservation Services (IFPS) programs that follow the Homebuilders model safely prevent placement in foster care. Read More

Everyone in family policing pays lip service to keeping families together. But if you want to know the system’s real priorities, just look at where the money goes – because they’re sure not putting it where their mouths are. Read More

The child savers’ approach to substance use by parents – some parents, anyway: Test pregnant women without their knowledge of consent, report anything and everything and, often, confiscate the children at birth, not only does enormous harm to the children taken, it also drives parents away from prenatal care or giving birth in a hospital. Read More

The federal law that effectively abolished the reasonable efforts requirement, the so-called Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA), also requires states to seek termination of parental rights for many children in foster care for 15 of the most recent 22 months. Some state laws are even more draconian. Read More

Although the idea of going “back to the orphanage” gained a great deal of attention when former House Speaker Newt Gingrich brought it up, the notion was quietly pushed by child savers for many years before – and some of them are still at it. Read More

Before termination of children’s rights to their parents (a more accurate term than “termination of parental rights”), before children are torn from the arms of their families and consigned to the chaos of foster care, before someone from the family police agency (a more accurate term than “child welfare” agency) pounds on the door in the middle of the night, demands entry, interrogates and sometimes stripsearches the children as part of a traumatic investigation – before any of that, there is a call to a child abuse “hotline.” Read More