I have always been quite passionate about this field as my future career, but as of the past two years, I have found an even greater interest in policy practice and advocacy in social work. My interests were sparked by my research into the child welfare system and the need for reform, and they have only grown with the courses I've taken here. While looking online for articles on the topic, one stuck out to me that shared many of my concerns and connected to more ideas I’ve been focusing on in my child advocacy courses. In the news article, "The Child Welfare System Needs an Overhaul," by the ACLU, they point out the extreme economic hardships and systemic racism at the root of many issues in child welfare cases at the federal, state, and local levels. The author points out the correlation between child welfare and poverty, as well as trends in cases relating to race. For families experiencing extreme poverty, statistics show they are more likely to be charged with neglect. Children of color are more likely to be reported, despite making up a smaller percentage of children overall.
Disproportionality can be caused by factors other than racial bias, although we ought to suspect racial bias is a factor. For example, their are 4.1 million African-Americans (9.3% of all African-Americans) living under 50% of the poverty rate, and 7.6 million non-Hispanic European-Americans in the same condition of desperate deprivation (3.9% of all non-Hispanic European-Americans). Using the supplemental poverty index, about 4.5% of “white alone” children were in poverty in 2021, whereas for “Black alone” the childhood poverty rate was 8.1%. If living in desperate poverty is a strong predictor of childhood maltreatment (either because of poverty or because the conditions that lead to poverty also lead to heightened risks of child maltreatment) we might expect child maltreatment to be about double the rate among African-Americans than it is among European-Americans. One of the key sources used by the ACLU report was the excellent work of Maguire-Jack, Font, and Dillard (2020), which somewhat controls for bias in actual incidence of maltreatment due to poverty by using only a sample of investigated cases. In their multivariate model (see pages 54-55), where they controlled for other possible causes (child and county and reporter characteristics), they found that substantiated maltreatment was 3% higher for Black children, 20% higher for American Indian, 15% higher for multiracial, and nearly 8% higher for Hispanic children. For the decision to make out-of-home placements among children with substantiated abuse, again in the multivariate model that controls for other things, Black children were 15% more likely to be removed, American Indian children were 23% more likely, and multiracial were 43% more likely, but Hispanic children were nearly 3% less likely to get an out-of-home placement.
The county context in which CPS workers investigate child maltreatment reports also influences whether they substantiate or decide on out-of-home placements. Again, this is the study by Maguire-Jack, et al. (2020) in which only investigated cases are used, so the bias in reporting should mostly be controlled for aside from the possible biases in having lower or higher thresholds for deciding to report and deciding to investigate. Counties with higher rates of single-parent headed households had higher rates of substantiated maltreatment. Counties with higher poverty rates generate lower findings of substantiated maltreatment for African-American children (a 15% drop) whereas rural counties raise rates of substantiation for Black children by 7% (but also raise substantiation rates for white children by 10%). Having a high percentage of single-parent households increases out-of-home placement. Having high poverty rates in a county lowers rates of out-of-home placements (for Black children by 15%; for White children by 7%).
There are probably several things going on with the high association between poverty of a household and neglect. Persons with mental or physical health problems that would make them more likely to remain poor may also have impaired parenting abilities. Single parents who are forced to earn a livelihood to support their children while also trying to live normal lives of dignity may not have adequate time or resources to meet social expectations of good parenting, and having a single parent (one income-earner in the household) makes a family far more likely to be poor than having two parents. Poverty may impose difficulties and stresses on parents that diminish their ability to be adequate parents, either directly by limiting their resources or indirectly by stressing them out so much that their brains are damaged by the stress. The association between poverty and unemployment and substance addiction runs both ways as well, and substance abuse is a leading contributing factor in child maltreatment. And, yes, social workers and family court judges may have a bias against persons who are poor. Americans tend to dislike poor people, so I expect some bias there. Hopefully in our classes at UIS we are diminishing the biases our students may have.
Some of the disparities are probably caused by bias, other disparities are caused by a system that prioritizes “personal responsibility of the parents” over the well-being of children in a way that violates my ethical principles about the inherent dignity and equal value of all persons. Other aspects of the disparities are probably attributable to conditions that are not caused by cruel systems or bias, but are rooted in individual characteristics that contribute to poverty and to a risk of maltreating one’s children.
Maguire-Jack, K. (2014). Multilevel investigation into the community context of child maltreatment. Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, 23, 229 –248. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10926771.2014 .881950
Maguire-Jack, K., Dillard, R., & Font, S. A. (2020) Child protective services decision-making: the role of children’s race and county factors. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 90 (1), 48-62. https://doi.org/10.1037/ort0000388
The ACLU report has this:
Neglect, as defined by the child welfare system, is often a proxy for poverty-related circumstances and is the primary reason for child welfare involvement in the overwhelming majority of cases.
Neglect is far more common than abuse. People more often fail to meet social standards for parenting by failing to do what is expected rather than doing something that is considered horrible (e.g., physical, psychological, or sexual abuse). Yes, neglect is often caused by a parent’s poverty, but it is often caused by other factors that are indirectly related to poverty or are not related at all to poverty. Persons should not lose custody of their children because they are poor, and we should not create systems in which poor parents are unable to reasonably provide for the basic and essential needs of their children.
The main case made in the ACLU and Human Rights Watch report is that children can be removed from parents or guardians who fail to provide adequate food, clothing, shelter, medical care, hygiene, nutrition, and supervision. Low income parents may not have the financial means to supply adequate levels of these things, and they may be so busy trying to earn the money required to supply these things that they are unable to find the time or mental attention to give adequate supervision or ensure that hygiene and nutritional standards are met. Considering that the United States has no laws to enforce Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we put the burden of supplying an “adequate standard of living” for children on their parents. Parents who cannot do this can lose custody of their children as a result. It would be more in line with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights if the state (society in general) ensured that children (and their parents) received an adequate standard of living, or the means of attaining such a standard, and then neglect would mean that a parent had actively failed to distribute the materials essential to an adequate standard of living that they had received from the state. But, as things stand, we have a system in which parents really can lose their children because they have not been able to find adequate and affordable housing or cannot afford adequate and nutritious food.
Should a poor family that refuses to seek medical treatment for their children and also refuse to register for Medicaid be considered perpetrators of maltreatment through medical neglect, or does this undermine parental autonomy? How about a family that qualifies for SSI, or SNAP benefits, and yet the parents are too proud to apply for those supports, and so their children go hungry and are malnourished?
There is a great disproportionality among children of color in the foster care system, and a racial bias perpetuates even further harm. This is seen within the child welfare system as well as society as a whole. Our history has caused disparities in income, education, employment, and more for POC communities. This racism has been embedded in the policies of our system, and institutional bias contributes to this inequality. The article states that indigenous and black families have a higher percentage of investigations than white families. This, among other statistics, confirms the trends of disproportionality within the system, thus harming more children than helping. The article also mentioned that despite an already high rate of investigations for families in poverty, numbers still show black families are more likely to be investigated even in communities with low poverty. Poverty plays a significant role in these trends: poor families have a higher rate of investigations and welfare interventions. However, there is often a misinterpretation of poverty vs. neglect:
"The overwhelming majority of cases, nearly 75 percent in 2019, include allegations of state-defined neglect, which is inextricably linked to poverty. Parents struggling with limited resources, unable to pay rent or secure stable housing, or working long hours to make ends meet, are judged unfit and neglectful" (Naveed, 2022).
The child welfare system needs to support parents struggling rather than being judged and punished. Families in poverty are often lacking the resources they need; it isn’t that they can’t take care of their children or that they are purposefully neglectful; it’s that they need more assistance and can thrive much better with a system that lifts rather than punishes. This is a system that pushes families into the impossible situation of "having to overcome poverty to stop being monitored and to reunite with their children, without providing them the resources necessary to do so" (Naveed, 2022). Although the evidence for the link between poverty and maltreatment is overwhelming, poverty is the result of long-term racism and structural adversity that have fostered risk factors that contribute to mistreatment in POC families. There is much work needed to undo the systemic biases within these services; policies must be created to better serve these communities. Reform is needed. The information in these articles and documents from my classes about the child welfare system reinforces the idea that change is desperately needed. I have always felt this way, and learning more about it in class makes me feel more strongly about it. These inequalities were what intrigued me most about the child welfare system and further encouraged me to look into policy practice within this discipline. As I reflect on the curriculum, I hope to learn more about what actions can be taken and how I can incorporate that into my future career goals.
“Reform is needed”. Yes, we want to extinguish the biased determination of maltreatment and the biased tendency to remove children. But what about this—what if the objective situation is that instead of a negative bias against Native American and Black families, those families are being treated exactly as they ought to be, and instead what we have is a positive bias, where European-American families are too often getting away with maltreatment by having cases as “not determined” or “unsubstantiated” and the real problem is that we ought to be removing more European-American children out of their households? What is the logical basis for thinking the bias is mainly a negative one against certain groups, and not so much a positive bias favoring European-American parents? The research cited in the article you read is convincing that there is bias, and the bias is influenced by county characteristics as well as household characteristics, but should we be “more lenient” with Native American and Black households or “more stringent” with European-American households?
I conceive of the determination to remove a child or substantiate an allegation of maltreatment as being in many cases quite easy to make, and bias wouldn’t enter into the picture. Probably we have the tail end of a normal curve of parenting quality. Given that the National Incidence Surveys tend to show maltreatment is experienced by about 2% to 3% of children each year, that fits fairly well with the idea that parents who are behaving two standard deviation lower than normal in “parenting quality” are generally maltreating their children. So, probably parents who are 2.2 standard deviations or more below median parenting are easily substantiated, and parents who are more than 2.8 standard deviations below normal are also cases where it’s easy to see the the child should be removed—no bias need enter the picture. The problem arises with parents who parent at a quality level that is 1.9 to 2.2 standard deviations below median: it’s a closer call there, so bias could cause systematic error in determinations or substantiations of maltreatment allegations. And likewise with the decision to remove: that’s going to be an issue in the cases that are around 2.6 to 3.0 below median in parenting quality. Given the expected slope at the tail end of a normal distribution, we’re looking at a situation where bias can enter the picture at a narrow band along the continuum of parenting behavior quality, but this narrow band is at the level where the greatest number of cases will occur. (A lot more parents are parenting at 1.9 or 2.0 standard deviations below median quality than are parenting at 2.4 or 2.6 standard deviations below median quality).
The tricky thing about these reforms that are going to reduce the bias is that they are going to address how the child protection workers deal with the cases that are close calls or in an area where the decisions are tough. The cases that are clear-cut and easy to determine are not the cases where bias gets a chance to enter the decision-making, at least normally (no doubt there are occasional cases of egregious bias, but child protection workers are generally well-enough trained that these should be exceptional cases).
