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| Photo by John Picken |
Over at the Chronicle
of Social Change, I have a blog post called “Donald Trump
and the Child Savers: Not a Band But They Sing the Same Song.” It’s about how people in child welfare, many
of whom abhor Trump, use his tactics to whip up hysteria over child abuse and
scare us into supporting policies that lead to the widespread, needless removal
of children from their homes. This does
terrible harm to the children needlessly taken.
It also steals time and resources from finding children in real danger.
Anyone who lives in a poor neighborhood knows this, of
course. The threat that Child Protective
Services (CPS) will confuse family poverty with neglect is a constant, nagging
fear. It dates all the way back to the
19th Century when Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Children – who disguised an agenda of hatred and fear for the immigrant poor
with lofty rhetoric about saving the children – were known in poor
neighborhoods simply as “The Cruelty.”
Yesterday, the rest of America got a small taste of how much
disruption can be caused when we give in to the Trump-style paranoia that has
long dominated the child welfare system.
It happened in Los Angeles, when one crude hoax email led to the
shutdown of the entire Los Angeles Unified School District – the nation’s
second largest. The only system that’s
bigger, the one in New York City, got a nearly identical email. They knew a hoax when they saw one, and
decided not to overreact.
By the time Los Angeles officials made their decision, many
students were on their way to school, or already there. According
to The New York Times:
The decision [In Los Angeles] threw the lives of millions of
people — students, parents, teachers — into disarray and sent a wave of concern
across an already tense region. “If they sent an alert, I never received it,”
said Christine Clarke, who showed up at Hollywood High School looking
frantically for her son after hearing the news on the radio. Parents scrambled
for last-minute day care or called in sick at work, …
And that may be the least of it. Police inspected more than 1,500 school sites
before the search finally was called off.
How much real crime was missed while all those police officers were
chasing down a hoax?
It could have been even worse. How many very young children could have been
left unsupervised, or gotten lost, in the chaos as parents tried to change
plans and find them? In short, the response
to the hoax caused more danger to the children than the hoax.
The mentality on display in Los Angeles is the
mentality that pervades child welfare.
It’s why caseworkers barge into the lives of more than three million
children every year, sometimes based on little more than an anonymous call to a
child protective hotline – and 80 percent of the reports are
false. As caseworkers spin
their wheels on false reports and trivial cases, children in real danger are
overlooked.
The mentality of those defending the
response in Los Angeles is strikingly like the mentality that dominates child
welfare. Again from the Times:
[Rep. Brad] Sherman said elements of the message did not appear credible, including the number of potential attackers and the claim that they had access to nerve gas. ([New York City Police Commissioner William] Bratton … suggested that the writer might have been inspired by recent episodes of “Homeland,” with its plotline of a sarin gas attack on Berlin.) The message was signed by a male Arabic-appearing name, Mr. Sherman said, but added: “The word ‘Allah’ appears several times in the email, but once it’s not capitalized. A devout Muslim or an extremist Muslim would probably be more careful about typing the world Allah.”
But then Sherman says:
The author appeared knowledgeable about the structure of the Los Angeles Unified School District, referring to the system by its full name, which added to the concern, Mr. Sherman said. “Just because parts of the email are false doesn’t mean it’s all false,” he said [emphasis added].
Classic. I’m reminded of the CPS caseworker who told
me that even if someone is harassing a family with false reports, workers
should keep right on going out and investigating the family time after time
after time because of “the cry wolf example.”
There’s still another parallel. Some have said, in effect, of course New York
and Los Angeles responded differently – L.A. is near San Bernardino. (Whereas New York, of course, has had no
experience with terrorism.)
In child welfare, agencies are more
likely to take the child and run if a high profile child abuse death is in theheadlines.
Or maybe it’s partly cultural. Even when rates of child poverty are factored
in, Los Angeles County takes away children at more than double the rate of New
York City. There is no evidence that Los
Angeles children are twice as safe as their New York City counterparts.
There is one difference though. When CPS agencies behave this way the stakes
are a lot higher. A child abuse
investigation is not a benign act. Having a stranger come to the
door – or your school – pull you aside and ask questions about the most
intimate aspects of your life can be an enormously traumatic experience for a
child; and the younger the child the greater the trauma. It can leave lifelong
emotional scars.
Even
worse, when the allegation is physical abuse – and, sometimes, even when it’s
not - the investigation often is accompanied by a stripsearch by a caseworker
or a doctor looking for bruises. If anyone else did that it would be
sexual abuse. And if the allegation is sexual abuse, the medical exam can be a lot more traumatic.
Indeed,
try to imagine the terror for a young child, suddenly taken from family by
strangers, often including police. She goes to a strange hospital, where
doctors and nurses she’s never met before perform the most intimate possible
examination.
All
this is before we even reach the harm of panicky caseworkers using flimsy
allegations to throw children needlessly into foster care.
Some
will read this and say: But what if there really had been a terrorist attack
and the school officials had ignored the warning?
Well,
everyone involved would have been fired, we know that. In contrast, no one will be held accountable
for the chaos caused by the overreaction – once again, the parallel to child
welfare is perfect.
But
we also should know this: Life comes with risk.
Every time we get into a car we run the risk that a drunk driver is heading
toward us in the next lane. Every time
we go for a swim we risk drowning. But
trying to take every last bit of risk out of our lives not only debilitates our
psyches – it also, paradoxically, puts us all at more risk.
