Do you have some data to support the position that foster care is at best inadequate? Do you have data to support the position that mistaken child removal is as widespread as even e.g. child abuse within the foster system? Finally, do you have data that illustrates how often children are relocated to strangers' houses, vs. with family members?
I absolutely agree that every time a child is abused in foster care, that's a damning failure of the system. But I do not share your belief that children who experience sufficient abuse to be removed from the home are permanently broken. Nor do I share your belief that the foster system is at best soul-crushing.
I need to give this a little more thought, but tomorrow or maybe this weekend I can dig up some studies to back up this conclusion. I think that it should be possible to show how that those removed from homes by CPS and placed into foster care have long term economic and psychiatric issues into adulthood that put them (more or less) on par with those who aren't removed and continue to suffer abuse as those people move into adulthood. That should settle any doubts about the "at best inadequate". Or do you interpret the meaning of my words differently?
I do not actually believe that "mistaken child removal" happens with any great frequency, CPS tends to err on the side of caution in most such cases, though out of cowardice or incompetence I couldn't even guess. If I implied this in the first comment, then I retract that and apologize. However, though it might not be with great frequency, even the uncommon occurrence of that is horrible.
>Finally, do you have data that illustrates how often children are relocated to strangers' houses, vs. with family members?
I do not. I would remind you though, that this isn't quite the gotcha you might think it is. I would guess that it happens quite often that they are placed with (distant) family, but that's not a good solution for any number of reasons. Though not always the case, relatives have higher chances of being dysfunctional than random chance should allow for, they often allow the parents contact despite CPS warnings, they tend to be elderly and less able to provide the sort of care that is merited. Even if we assume that children are placed with them half the time and that they are always a good placement, that only halves the sort of problem I've hinted at in the first comment.
>But I do not share your belief that children who experience sufficient abuse to be removed from the home are permanently broken.
I hesitate with this one. I would offer to let you decide what the criteria for "permanently broken" is in this context, so that I can find the particular studies that would convince you. The life expectancy is roughly 75 years, and I'd suggest that if some large fraction of their life was dysfunctional, weighted to the earlier years rather than in old age, then this might be a good way to figure it. "Dysfunctional" could be somewhat objective, like being institutionalized, imprisoned, in the justice system, with debilitating psychiatric illnesses (alcoholism, etc), or just dead from any of those earlier than a person should die.
But you do the definition. I feel like I might be stacking the deck with my suggestion, and I can't even think of a good way not to do that. It's all pretty fucking bleak.
I've first hand knowledge of how problematic the extended family of child abusers can be. But the argument from CPS and the courts is that all else being equal (including probability of abuse in the new digs), the familiarity of grandparents, aunts/uncles, adult siblings is better for the child than a foster home or ersatz orphanage. I'm not sure if there's data to back that up, but given how frequently this occurs as an informal arrangement (I'm currently watching this particular arrangement unfold with my parents-in-law and a niece, and the particular details of that situation are, as you say, pretty bleak), I suspect that it is, on balance, the best outcome for a shitty situation.
For myself, for my niece, I have to believe that doing the social support equivalent of taking them out by the woodshed as soon as abuse occurs is giving up way too soon.
I absolutely agree that every time a child is abused in foster care, that's a damning failure of the system. But I do not share your belief that children who experience sufficient abuse to be removed from the home are permanently broken. Nor do I share your belief that the foster system is at best soul-crushing.
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