LOUSY PARENTS AND LOUSY RESULTS
Let’s be real here: Do lousy
parents really deserve more than one chance to be a good parent?
In a fourth-grade classroom, you hear
many “slays” and "skibidi-toilets” but what you don’t often hear is “I am depressed;
I need help.” That’s what a little boy said one day during our language arts
class. Between a mom who found a worthless life more important than her own son
and the ghosting from protective services this boy remained stuck. Unfortunately,
this is the harsh reality of many children’s lives. With Child Protective
Services in place, we could save children from being in this position, but with
their goal of preserving families, their overload of cases, and their lack of actions,
they fail our children time and time again.
It’s typical that at some point in
life we’ve all had to weigh our decisions. Whether that be deciding whether you
should get the Starbucks drink versus save your money or even making a pros and
cons list of your crush’s traits, any situation has positives and negatives. Now
you may say “removing children from their homes may be even more traumatic”,
“everyone deserves second chances”, or “what more can the system do” and all of
those are valid reactions. But let’s be honest, does hearing news that a child
died from abuse or went through life with serious mental illnesses make those
seem like the better options? I don’t think so.
Here's what it comes down to: the
system has too much faith in parents who could care less. Randy Burton,
the founder of Justice for Children, mentions how the goal to keep families
together is a “social experiment” that allows children to stay in homes of
abuse. Pretty much, we are using the lives of children to play as peacemakers so
the system can say they saved a family.
On a darker note, Burton explains
how out of 3 million reports of child abuse or neglect made in 1993, 42% of
those children died even after already being reported for being in danger at
least once before and these deaths are purely based on the system prioritizing
the family compared to the safety of the child. That shows that we are willing
to keep children in places where they can die simply because the system wanted
to keep a family together.
Piggybacking off that, in a review
of training programs in child welfare Marianne Berry points out how
there is a reabuse rate of 17 out of 25 percent in biological homes. We want to
keep children in their homes and keep families together but is it really a home
if you are repeatedly harmed in it.
It’s a common feeling to experience system overload and feel like your brain is going to explode. For day-to-day activities, it’s not a life-or-death situation if something doesn’t get done. But for a system that is supposed to be protecting children, it sure is. Sadly, system overload is a large problem with our Child Protective Services.
Randy Burton, the founder of Justice for Children, explains that since the beginning of the child protection system it has become one where overworked and uneducated individuals make decisions that leave children in harmful homes. We are ultimately failing children because of this. Every child deserves to be in a safe home and anybody who can make that happen owes it to these hurting children to give them all their effort and resources to potentially save their lives.
An alarming 75% of investigations were inaccurate due to the rushed nature and wrong decisions made during the investigation process according to Luz Lozano, who published his newspaper on USA Today Network. This percentage quite literally turns stomachs upside down. We are trusting these services to protect us when they won’t even give their time of day to make sure things are accurate.
3 million reports of child neglect or abuse were made in 1993 according to Randy Burton’s writing about our failing system. 72% of those reports were never investigated and of the half of the reports that were confirmed for abuse there was no follow up. Now you may say, those reports are from the dinosaur ages how does this affect us today. The numbers from that year open the minds of how effective our services were. It shows a saddening reality of where we started. One can only hope we’ve progressed since then.
Well, you guessed it, we were wrong. Kati Mapa, the director of public policy of the Child Welfare League of America, shared in a child maltreatment report of 2022 that of the 4,276,000 total referrals the rate of screened-in referrals is 29.0 per 1,000 children. Even more alarming, of the 47 states that report their referrals, 49.5% are screened in and 50.5% are screened out. Let’s break that into simple terms. Less than half of the referrals made to Child Protective Services pass for investigation while over half of the referrals never get investigated. Tell me how we are supposed to save children if we don’t step up and take action or even look into the situation.
At the
end of the day, the faults of our Child Protective Services weren’t just from
our past, they are still showing today. Giving parents too many chances? Still
happening. Overload of cases? Still prevalent. Lack of action? Still causing harm. These changes won't just fix themselves. We need to do better. All hope is not gone but the truth of the matter is, we
need to stand up and speak up and finally give these children the justice they
deserve. Without our help who knows how many children are going to continue to get hurt.
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