In a
column for Youth Today last month, I wrote
about how the state’s own “Peer Review Team” report found that in metropolitan
Tampa, Florida, far too many children were being needlessly taken from their
parents and consigned to the chaos of a foster care system so awful that some
of them were literally parked all day in a convenience store parking lot.
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| Chris Card discusses his agency's "corrective action plan" in a story from WFLA-TV |
In a follow-up
column for this blog I noted that things are only likely to get worse. That’s
because of who has been chosen as head of “community-based care” for Eckerd
Connects, the embattled agency that’s sort of in charge of child welfare in the
region. Eckerd chose Chris Card. Card has
a long, ugly history of supporting a take-the-child-and-run approach to child
welfare.
I concluded that column this way:
Granted, a primary tenet of the family preservation movement is that people can change. But does Chris Card want to change?
Unfortunately, it looks like the answer already is in: No,
he doesn’t.
The answer came in a
story in the Tampa Bay Times. (As
usual, the Times was playing
catch-up to WFLA-TV, which had the same story days earlier.) It concerns
the “corrective action plan” Card’s agency has to submit to the state.
The Times story
finally mentioned the “Peer Review Team” report’s findings about the high rate
of removal in Hillsborough County - while failing to mention that the report
said this high rate of removal was unnecessary and illegal. Then the story quoted Card, who declared:
Just because we’re taking more kids into care doesn’t mean that’s wrong necessarily.
And the fact that a team of your own “peers” said it’s not
only wrong but illegal? Well, who cares,
right?
Card’s statement suggests that the parts of the “corrective
action plan” about doing more to keep families together are just b.s. to
placate state officials.
This would be disturbing at any time. It’s especially now, when all over America,
what Donald Trump is doing to children at the border has professionals speaking
out about the catastrophic effects of tearing apart families.
Yes, the
motives are different. I think Chris
Card has the best of intentions. But
that’s not good enough – because regardless of the motive, the effects on the
children are the same.
If anything, the Tampa
Bay Times is worse. In an editorial,
the Times, as usual, resurrected the Big
Lie of American child welfare, suggesting that family preservation and
child safety are at odds and that, if not for the Times’ eternal vigilance the Vast Family Preservation Conspiracy
will rise up and leave children in danger.
Or, as the editorial put it:
While Hillsborough may have tilted too far in some cases toward removing children from their parents, it will be equally important not to over-correct and leave children in dangerous situations in the name of keeping families together at virtually any cost.
So, let’s review. Children are literally being parked in cars.
The state’s own report says there is widespread needless illegal sundering of
families. An infant in Hillsborough County was taken from his mother solely
because the mother was poor – and
then died in foster care. And
all you can do, Tampa Bay Times, is dredge
up that Big Lie about advocates for family preservation supposedly out to keep
families together “at virtually any cost.”
Donald Trump would be proud.
The editorial caricatures anyone who wants to keep families
together in Tampa in the same way Trump says anyone who wants to keep families
together at the border supports “open borders” and gang violence.
In fact, family preservation isn’t just more humane than
foster care. For the overwhelming majority of children it’s also safer than foster care. And the more you
overload your system with children who don’t need to be there, the less time workers have to find children in
real danger.
So here is the one-point “corrective action plan” I wish someone
would impose on Chris Card and the Tampa
Bay Times editorial board:
Make them sit in a room and listen to the audio of desperate
children crying for their mothers and fathers at a detention center on the
border. Then make him listen again. And
again. And again. Until, finally, it sinks in that the children
needlessly and illegally torn from their families in Hillsborough County,
Florida, every day, shed the same sorts of tears for the same sorts of
reasons. And finally it sinks in that
their casual dismissal of the problem of needless removal is adding to the
terrible harm already done to the vulnerable children of Hillsborough
County.
