We have an equivalent of Child Protection Services here in my country, and what they do is take away the children from bad parents.
It's not a great solution, there's a massive overpopulation of children in foster homes if lucky, group homes if unlucky.
I wish they did something to the parents (my radical solution would be some kind of reversible sterilization until they prove themselves able to raise a kid)
BTW there was a thread where people complained that Child Protection Services threatened some HackerNewser parents to take their children away because they left them to play in a park alone, yet they don't do anything in Baltimore?
Can't really agree though. The issue with child services is that they can act faster than the criminal system. You might want to say that they couldn't act to remove or otherwise enforce parental restrictions until criminal charges are made (leaving other less adversarial actions available). An unintended consequence of this may be that charges are made much more easily for the purpose of unblocking child services.
Alternatively, it may be that we want to take the same 'rational' look at risk that we want the courts/child services to take. Maybe the few kids that get taken away 'unreasonably' are actually just the cost of having an otherwise sane system. Lest that come off as callous, I just mean that if you have a country of 300 million, you'll get some pretty far out scenarios played out. You don't necessarily want to add process to protect those very few scenarios that are outrageous because it may cost more (by e.g. tying CPS' hands so that they can't take actually at-risk children out of homes).
I guess I'm suggesting that this might, in the end, be much ado about nothing. It's hard to say without numbers and analysis.
(USA centric view) You cannot legislate parents into being good parents. You cannot pass laws that protect children from bad parenting as best case result you may get the state to intervene and put the child in a foster system where there's a 50% chance that they end up in an even worse place.
In practice it just doesn't work very well sometimes. I think it's better to risk letting more child abusers off the hook, than potentially ruining the lives of decent parents like these.
Child protection is like a loaded gun sitting on a table waiting for someone to pick it up. Anyone who doesn't like you or the way you raise your kids can phone in a trumped-up complaint and send investigators in your home to see if your child needs to be taken away and put into a lowest-bidder archipelago of foster homes and group facilities. Disgusting all around to me.
It’s true that there are some very bad parents. It’s also true that no state run system has been as good as biological or adoptive parents for the vast majority of children... even those with negligent parents.
Only in extreme cases does one bad (taking a child away from parent figures) justify removing them and putting them in a state run system (another bad). There’s certainly a place for that, but it’s at the extremes.
Many would like to claim that the state should raise kids. That’s a stance that does great harm to parents and children alike.
The United States does separate children from their parents and put them in the foster system when their parents are tried and convicted and nobody is around to take care of the kids, take that as you will. (Personally I think it is very bad and poses the question of which crimes can be awarded non-prison sentences which presently mean prison. Few people are so bad that the loss to society of incarcerating them does not go beyond the cost, which is already high, of maintaining the prisons.)
This statement seems to be based on a false premise that foster care is bad care (it is often very good care where I originate from, UK) and ignores the fact that sometimes parents kill their children and that there are many children in desperate need of help.
The greater problem with the CPS or similar agencies is underfunding. This leads to families only having dealings with them when the circumstances are suspected of being dire, rather than CPS having the resources to support parents in a meaningful way over a meaningful period of time. Such meaningful support helps to reduce the need for more drastic interventions and allows social workers to have much more knowledge of the families they are helping and of when interventions are needed.
Technically I was a free range latch key kid. I'm not sure how involved CPS here is involved in the bad parenting cases. They're probably overwhelmed with drug addicted parents and kids who's parents are criminals.
I think bad parents should be punished but I'm wouldn't go as far as to say they're criminals. It's a very slippery slope. I feel like a voluntary reversible sterilization subsidies from the government would be a pretty good idea.
It would be nice if prosecutors really were that compassionate. I've read that lots of kids end up in foster care because their parents go to jail. But maybe that only happens to poor people.
An alternative would be to have criminal parents serve time consecutively -- that way noone gets away, and the children would not have to be taken away.
> The primary goal is to keep children with their parents/parent wherever possible
It doesn't sound like children that are taken away in these cases end in the foster system, they are just taken to the other parent (who may be abusive).
And there's the detail that of course any such punishment will make the problem infinitely worse. Why are laws always written from the point of view that the state is all-powerful, that it can and will solve whatever problem such a law creates ? It just won't. This sounds, on the surface like it will improve kids' lives, but it will make quite a few kids' lives a LOT worse once you take into account that there's nothing the the state can do here. It cannot replace parents it takes away (nor would kids accept those new parents).
(Before you say "but child services/adoption/foster care", read about how well kids are supervised there. Foster care is a LOT worse for kids than being ignored at home)
it's not the foster care that is the problem. even if the foster parents are perfect, separating children from their parents against their will is causing severe trauma to the children and often hurting them more than what the parents might do to them.
i agree with your second paragraph. the focus needs to be on supporting parents to take better care of their children.
> Can you articulate why you think it is any worse than child services putting a kid into foster care when the parents go to jail for any other crime?
I'd hope normal foster care in the US looks slightly better, and is better communicated (assuming the reports about ICE not telling parents what they are doing with their children are accurate). E.g. normally I'd expect incarcerated parents to still know about the whereabouts of their children, being allowed to communicate with them, ... unless there's strong reasons to forbid this.
While I think it's at least an interesting question if it is strictly necessary to separate families, I'd guess that if the process appeared less horrific there'd be a lot less of an outcry.
From what I've read, it also appears that the vast majority cases are first-time entries, which only is a misdemeanor in the US? While it makes some sense to "keep" people somewhere in this case (can't just let them go with a fine like you'd do for a traffic offense), it seems less than clear to me that this has to be to the same "standards" as people being jailed for serious crimes, and regular access to the children can't be possible. (And to be clear, I'd generally argue for such policies, not just in the case of immigrants)
My wife's family fostered and the only thing that happens is the kids eventually get sent back to the families. Even families who have abused the kids multiple times. We don't have an answer to kids from bad families. The state can't overcome bad parents.
> But which is worse - letting an abused child slip through the cracks, or take a child away from an innocent family?
From a practical standpoint, taking a child away from the innocent family is worse. Even if they somehow were to "rescue" the abused child, that's pretty much a lost cause. They aren't doing it to salvage the child, but to assuage some sort of guilt that they let it happen in the first place. The child will be placed in foster care, which at its best is merely inadequate and soul-crushing, but at its worst is some gauntlet of rape and abuse itself which few children are capable of surviving psychologically intact.
So when they take the child away from the innocent family, this is almost certainly a net negative response. Instead of helping more children, they are hurting more children.
It's a very easy answer, easily reached, and solidly objective. It's just not a comfortable answer, because most people want the answer to be different.
> CPS must be one of the hardest jobs in the country.
Jobs whose premise is fundamentally defective often are the most difficult. Think of how many times someone who worked for CPS or who was affiliated with them said (cynically) something to the effect of how "no matter what we do, it seems like we're always in the wrong". Well, that's because they are.
Huge problem: CPS will arrest the parents for allowing their children to walk around the neighborhood. When I was a kid, I went all over the neighborhood, made friends everywhere. Today, that's not possible. Karens will call the police, and the government will fine the parents, or worse take the children away.
We have an equivalent of Child Protection Services here in my country, and what they do is take away the children from bad parents.
It's not a great solution, there's a massive overpopulation of children in foster homes if lucky, group homes if unlucky.
I wish they did something to the parents (my radical solution would be some kind of reversible sterilization until they prove themselves able to raise a kid)
BTW there was a thread where people complained that Child Protection Services threatened some HackerNewser parents to take their children away because they left them to play in a park alone, yet they don't do anything in Baltimore?
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