Confusing poverty and neglect
....parental drug use, mental illness, homelessness are traumatic for children.
“Poverty isn’t neglect.” The statement undoubtedly is true, and not necessarily one that should drive folks to a political corner. Although it’s often heard these days in the context of a more “progressive” viewpoint in child welfare, one of its early and strong proponents was my old boss Sonny Perdue, a Republican Governor.
There is, however, a danger in taking this concept a step further and assuming that parental poverty and child neglect can’t go hand in hand and be a symptom of deeper parental or family dysfunction. That’s my takeaway from a recent article on children living with families in the homeless camps and on the streets of Portland, Oregon. There, where even fentanyl use has been legalized “decriminalized,” advocates have decried the number of children exposed to violence, drugs, and trauma in the camps. As one advocate related:
A few years ago, he informed the [Oregon Department of Human Services] that he had seen a naked three-year-old girl, standing alone in the woods near discarded hypodermic needles, with her parents “nodded out a half-mile away.” The operator refused to send anyone to investigate, telling him, he says: “Poverty is not a crime.”
I sense that a lot of our colleagues in child welfare see family homelessness merely as the result of financial crisis and not as indicative of deeper issues. This website, for example, lists the top three reasons for family homelessness as a lack of affordable housing, unemployment, and poverty. But as the National Alliance to End Homelessness acknowledges, “On a given night in 2023, 31 percent of the homeless population reported having a serious mental illness, 24 percent conditions related to chronic substance abuse, and nearly 11,000 people had HIV/AIDS.” The percentage of severely dysfunctional homeless parents is likely higher in Portland, which has become a beacon for seriously addicted parents due to its tolerance of — if not support of — hard drug use. How many of those children in Portland’s camps have addicted or psychotic parents?
One might argue that Portland is the test case for a post-apocalyptic abolitionist world without police, jails, or child protective services. As a number of academics have recently asked, in such a world, who would protect the children? While families may have rallied around to help a struggling parent in an idyllic earlier age where relatives stayed on the same land for generations, we now live in an age when families are often disconnected and isolated from one another. Over 25 years, I’ve seen situation after situation of child abuse involving children whose parent was estranged from or living long distances from any supportive relative.
In a world without a functioning child protective services agency, it’s not hard to imagine the world becoming a Portland homeless encampment, where the lives of children are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
In other news:
Virginia lawmakers are considering a bill that would put “guardrails” around the voluntary kinship care process. It would create a “parental child safety placement program” through which the child welfare agency, with parental consent, could place children with a relative. Unlike current practice, the bill would require the agency to put in writing how it will provide ongoing services to the parent, voluntary caregiver, and child; put time limits on the agency so that, if the problem in the parental home isn’t remedied in 90 days, the matter will go to court; and give the voluntary caretaker first dibs on longer-term placement of the child if necessary. I like the bill, as I’ve advocated for this kind of program in the past. All it lacks is a guarantee of some level of financial support to the caregiver such as subsidized child care. Richard Wexler doesn’t like it.
A bill would allow West Virginia legislators to get more details on child protection failures by the state’s CPS agency.
The abandonment of a baby in a Mississippi dumpster has spurred discussion of the importance of Safe Haven laws. Thankfully, the child is safe!
Maine’s new child welfare leader promises to listen to her front-line workers. That’s hopeful!
Here’s your weekly reminder about the importance to children of secure relational attachments.
Cage match at the New Mexico legislature over child welfare.
Kansas sees improvement in its child welfare system, as does Michigan.
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