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The system’s myriad failures are well documented .4 Critics argue that the system undermines family relationships and is ineffective because the state attempts to help much too late, after families are already in crisis .5 Despite recent declines in the overall number of children in foster care, the system lacks the capacity to provide appropriate case management, services and supports to its large caseloads .6 The response to complex family circumstances is often cookie-cutter . The system does not adequately protect children, exemplified by the alarming number of child deaths of system-involved children .7 Children in foster care often do not receive appropriate educational, medical, and therapeutic care, and remain in foster care for too long, increasing the likelihood of exacerbated emotional and behavioral problems . At the same time, deteriorating relationships with biological families means that children lack opportunities to develop nurturing support systems . The poor outcomes of many teens who age out of foster care—homelessness, lack of academic and employment skills, and high rates of incarceration and mental illness—stand as testimony that the state is a poor substitute parent .
The system is over-inclusive, intervening in situations that do not warrant the coercive force of public intervention .8 The majority of cases in the child welfare system are for neglect, relating to issues such as unstable housing, lack of child care, inadequate mental health and medical services, and substance abuse .9 Poor children are more likely to be reported to child protection agencies, removed from their homes, and experience lengthy stays in foster care .10 The disproportionate representation of poor children in foster care has caused some scholars to conclude the poverty equates with a finding of neglect .11 Although their overall numbers have declined, Black children are still over-represented in foster care .12 Professor Dorothy Roberts and other scholars have written about the ways in which concentrated child welfare involvement in already distressed neighborhoods disrupts, restructures, and polices families and communities .13
4 See e.g., u.s. advisory Board on child aBuse and neglecT, child aBuse and neglecT: criTical firsT sTeps in response To a naTional emergency (1990); Sandra Bass et al., Children, Families and Foster Care: Analysis and Recommendations, 14 The fuTure of children 1 (Winter 2004), available at http://www.princeton.edu/futureofchildren/publications/ docs/14_01_FullJournal.pdf.
5 clare hunTingTon, failure To flourish 92-95 (2013); doroThy roBerTs, shaTTered Bonds: The color of child welfare 228-240 (2002).
6 Sandra Bass et al., supra note 4, at 6; u.s. hhs children’s Bureau, child welfare ouTcomes 2008-2011: reporT To congress, execuTive summary, available at https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/cb/cwo08_11_exesum.pdf.
7 AP Examines Deaths of Kids Known to Child Protective Services, Jsonline.com (Dec. 18, 2014), http://www.jsonline. com/news/wisconsin/ap-examines-deaths-of-kids-known-to-child-protective-services-b99410970z1-286276231. html (reporting that over 6 years at least 786 children died of abuse or neglect after contact with child welfare agencies).
8 Jane Waldfogel, Rethinking the Paradigm for Child Protection, 8 The fuTure of children 107 (Spring 1998), https:// www.princeton.edu/futureofchildren/publications/docs/08_01_06.pdf.
9 In 2013, 79.5 percent of substantiated reports nationwide were the result of neglect. children’s Bureau, child malTreaTmenT 23 (2013); roBerTs, supra note 5 at 27-47.
10 roBerT B. hill, cenTer for The sTudy of social policy, SyntheSiS oF reSearCh on diSproportionaLity in ChiLd weLFare: an update (2006), available at http://www.cssp.org/reform/child-welfare/other-resources/synthesis-of-research-on- disproportionality-robert-hill.pdf.
11 The relationship between child maltreatment and poverty are complex, and theories about the association include that maltreatment is indirectly caused by parental poverty, detected because of poverty, or defined by parental poverty, roBerTs, supra note 5 at 27-47; leroy h. pelTon, for reasons of poverTy: a criTical analysis of The puBlic child welfare sysTem in The uniTed sTaTes 38-45 (1989).
12 In 2012, 26 percent of children in foster care were Black, although only 13.9 percent of children in the country were Black. children’s defense fund, The sTaTe of america’s children 36, 76 (2014), available at http://www. childrensdefense.org/library/state-of-americas-children/2014-soac.pdf.
13 Dorothy Roberts, The Dialectic of Privacy and Punishment in the Gendered Regulation of Parenting, 5 sTan. J. civ. rTs. & civ. liBerTies 191(2009); Annette Appell, Protecting Children or Punishing Mothers: Gender, Race and Class in the Child Protection System, 48 s.c. l. rev. 577 (1997).
Impact: Collected Essays on the Threat of Economic Inequality