In a comprehensive story about a new report from the Child Welfare Services Branch, Civil Beat posed an important question: Can the decline in the number of children Hawaii holds in foster care be attributed to a shortage of caseworkers?
The answer is no. Because shortages don’t work that way.
Even at their best, family policing systems (a more accurate term than “child welfare” systems) are arbitrary, capricious and cruel. They routinely make terrible mistakes in all directions. They leave some children in dangerous homes even as they take many more from homes that are safe or could be made safe with the right kinds of help.
An overloaded system makes all of this worse. What should be an examination of a case becomes a look; a look becomes a glance. There are more snap judgments, and they can go either way. …
