scholarly journals The Surveillance Tentacles of the Child Welfare System

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Baughman ◽  
Tehra Coles ◽  
Jennifer Feinberg ◽  
Hope Newton
Keyword(s):  
Child Welfare ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Child Welfare System ◽  
Regulation System ◽  
Medical Providers ◽  
Family Separation ◽  
Communities Of Color ◽  
The Family ◽  
Family Regulation ◽  
Cross System

The family regulation system identifies families through the use of widespread, cross-system surveillance for the purported purpose of keeping children safe. But the system does not surveil all families equally, leading to the disproportionate impact of family regulation on Black, Brown, and Native families, and fails to protect while causing more harm to children and communities of color. We examine how institutions and professionals that are meant to provide necessary services to the community—medical providers, social services agencies, the police, and schools—act as tentacles of surveillance, entrapping families in the family regulation system. We argue that engineering service and community providers as surveillance agents perpetuates inequality and leads to unnecessary family separation and trauma, and that genuine support for families can only thrive outside of the family regulation system and its surveillance tentacles. 

scholarly journals Ending the Family Death Penalty and Building a World We Deserve

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley Albert ◽  
Tiheba Bain ◽  
Elizabeth Brico ◽  
Bishop Marcia Dinkins ◽  
Kelis Houston ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
White Supremacy ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Black Families ◽  
Regulation System ◽  
Black Mothers ◽  
Termination Of Parental Rights ◽  
Family Separation ◽  
The Family ◽  
The World ◽  
Family Regulation

U.S. history is rooted in the rationalization of family separation to benefit white supremacy, capitalism and mainstream U.S. values. Because of this dark history, the U.S. history has become the world’s leader of legal destruction of families through termination of parental rights. It is the only country in the world that routinely pays people to adopt children whose parents, often women, very much want to be their parent. The Adoption and Safe Families Act, enacted in 1997, wildly changed the legal landscape of the family regulation system. At that time 47% of the children in the system were Black, and the drug war had been targeting Black men for low level offenses, and labeling Black mothers as “crack moms”. The result was an extreme attack on Black families, for which we have yet to recover.   Abolition teaches us to unroot oppressive structures, disrupt and dismantle them while simultaneously supporting a praxis of imagination, healing, and building. In this paper, we encourage people not only to work to repeal ASFA, but to interrogate the imagination which entrenched the legitimacy of ASFA. Part I centers the discussion in our imaginations—the world we want to build, and the demands we are making. Part II moves into a discussion about the counter imagination, the ideas and mythology that created ASFA—the legal framework. In this section, we isolate ASFA as a target for abolition and organizing. Part III moves into a practical discussion about ethical ways to mobilize around ASFA. This section is intended to invite the reader to learn, and question, together. It invites questions, thinking, and problem solving in lieu of providing a recommendation.

scholarly journals Abolition, settler colonialism, and the persistent threat of Indian child welfare

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Edwards ◽  
Theresa Rocha Beardall
Keyword(s):  
Child Welfare ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Child Welfare System ◽  
Welfare System ◽  
Indian Child ◽  
Family Separation ◽  
Indian Child Welfare Act ◽  
Tribal Communities ◽  
Tribal Nations

Family separation is a defining feature of the relationship between the U.S. government and American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) families and tribal nations. The historical record catalogues this relationship in several ways including the mass displacement of Native children into boarding schools throughout the 19th century and the widespread adoption of Native children into non-Indian homes in the 20th century. Child removal was commonplace, and explicitly directed at the elimination of Native cultures and nations through aggressive assimilation. This violent legacy eventually prompted the passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) of 1978. The ICWA introduced federal protections for Native children, families, and tribes against unnecessary removal and affirmed the role of the tribe as an important partner in child welfare proceedings. To what extent has this landmark legislation changed the prevalence and frequency of Native family separation since 1978? What can be done to reduce the threat of the child welfare system on the well-being of Native families today? In this Article, we use administrative and historical data to statistically evaluate the magnitude of change in AIAN family separation since the passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act and locate the institutional pathways by which AIAN families are funneled into the child welfare system. Our findings reveal that despite long-standing treaty responsibilities to support the health and well-being of tribal nations, high rates of separation among AIAN children persist. In particular, we find that the frequency of AIAN children's placement into foster care has remained relatively stable since the passage of the ICWA, that AIAN children remain at incredibly high risk of family separation through the child welfare system, and that the post-investigation removal decision by child welfare agencies is a key mechanism of inequality in family separation. We situate these findings within theories about settler colonialism and Indigenous dispossession to illustrate that the continuous removal of Native children from their families and tribal communities is not an anomaly. Instead, we argue that the very intent of a White supremacist settler-state is to dismantle Native families and tribal nations. Based upon these findings, we shift our focus away from the particularities of Indian child welfare and argue that the child welfare system more broadly must be abolished in order to stop the routine separation of Native children from their families by the state. Left intact, child protection systems prioritize surveillance and separation over welfare and support, affecting non-White children and families in immeasurable ways. We suggest that the ICWA has provided, and will continue to provide, a necessary intervention to protect Native families so long as this intrusive system remains. We conclude by exploring how an abolitionist approach to child welfare might positively impact Native families by immediately redirecting social and financial resources into the hands of Native families and working cooperatively with tribal communities to promote Indigenous communities of care.

scholarly journals Considering Family and Child Welfare in Lithuania in Terms of Social Sustainability Pursuant to Observations of Everyday Professional Practice

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (16) ◽  
pp. 8751
Author(s):  
Rasa Naujanienė ◽  
Jonas Ruškus ◽  
Merja Laitinen ◽  
Roberta Motiečienė ◽  
Julija Eidukevičiūtė
Keyword(s):  
Child Welfare ◽  
Professional Practice ◽  
Social Sustainability ◽  
Child Welfare System ◽  
Welfare System ◽  
Best Interests ◽  
The Social ◽  
Problem Frame ◽  
The Family ◽  
Sustainability Concept

This article investigates the family and child welfare system in Lithuania in terms of social sustainability, with an emphasis on children’s rights. The conceptual framework of Gilbert et al. (2011a) on child welfare was used as the substance of the research, identifying the problem frame, aim and mode of intervention, and parent–state relationship as the main dimensions for analyzing configurations of the child welfare systems. The analysis in this article focuses on how the family and child welfare system is observed in everyday professional practice in Lithuania by linking it with the social sustainability concept. The quantitative research sample comprised 501 respondents from Lithuania, representing different professionals of the family and child welfare system. An online questionnaire was distributed across regional municipal social services departments and to the national service of the State Child Rights Protection and Adoption Service. Explorative factor analysis and multidimensional scaling were used for data analysis. The research demonstrated that family and child welfare dimensions are meaningfully related to the social sustainability concept through the rights of a child such as the child’s best interests, accessibility to services, the right to be heard, protection against violence, child identity, development assurance, and so forth. The research indicates the need for awareness raising, including education and training for professional actors regarding child and family welfare, as an integral part of the concept of social sustainability.

scholarly journals Challenges to Family Unity and Opportunities for Promoting Child Welfare in an Increasingly Punitive Immigration Landscape

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 727-744 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Finno-Velasquez ◽  
Alan J. Dettlaff
Keyword(s):  
Child Welfare ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Psychological Trauma ◽  
Child Welfare System ◽  
Family Reunification ◽  
Welfare System ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
The Past ◽  
Family Unity

This paper describes specific challenges to family unity and child welfare among children in immigrant families resulting from immigration enforcement. Surges in immigration activity over the past decade have resulted in family economic hardship, psychological trauma to children, and difficulty accessing social services. Children whose parents are detained/deported are at risk of unnecessarily entering the child welfare system, and encounter significant barriers to family reunification. In recent months, the scope of enforcement priorities that previously safeguarded many parents now target a much larger group of immigrants for deportation, increasingly disregarding the needs of children. Immigration raids have terrorized communities across the country, and repercussions are being felt by the child welfare system and social service providers. Within an anti-immigrant political climate, there is a desperate need for social workers to lead initiatives to respond to immigrants’ needs. Strategies include: (1) development of social work expertise in working with immigrants; (2) cross-systems and cross-disciplinary collaborations; (3) leveraging existing resources and supports; (4) documentation/collection of data; and (5) focused advocacy efforts.

scholarly journals The White Supremacy Hydra

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Miriam Mack
Keyword(s):  
Child Protection ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Black Families ◽  
Regulation System ◽  
Prevention Services ◽  
The Family ◽  
Regulation Policy ◽  
Modern Family ◽  
Family Regulation ◽  
First Time

Fundamentally, the so-called “child welfare system”—more appropriately named, the family regulation system—is a policing system rooted in white supremacist ideologies and techniques. From its earliest iteration, the family regulation system has functioned to pathologize, control, and punish the families entrapped in its web, most especially Black families. Nevertheless, among many, the myth persists that the family regulation system is one of child protection and family support. This is especially true when discussing the Family First Prevention Services Act of 2018, which—for the first time since the establishment of the modern family regulation system—opens up federal funding streams previously reserved for the removal of children to the foster system to provide prevention services for families in which children have not yet been removed to the foster system. While the Act is a course change in federal family regulation policy, this Article traces how it leaves undisturbed the pathology, control, and punishment central to the policies that preceded it.

scholarly journals Reimagining Schools' Role Outside the Family Regulation System

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Brianna Harvey ◽  
Josh Gupta-Kagan ◽  
Christopher Church
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Child Protection ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mandatory Reporting ◽  
Regulation System ◽  
Mandated Reporting ◽  
The Family ◽  
Family Regulation ◽  
Low Income Families

The United States’ family regulation system often begins with well-intentioned professionals making child protection hotline calls, jeopardizing their own ability to work with families and subjecting the families to surveillance. By the system’s own standards, most of this surveillance leads to no meaningful action. Nowhere is this reality more present than in schools. Educational personnel serve as the leading driver of child maltreatment allegations, yet decades worth of data reveal educator reports of maltreatment are the least likely to be screenedin and the least likely to be substantiated or confirmed. In other words, education personnel— whether motivated by genuine concern, which may nevertheless be informed by implicit biases towards low-income families and families of color; fear of liability; or the desire to access services they believe families cannot acquire elsewhere— overwhelm our child welfare system with unnecessary allegations of maltreatment. This reality has fundamentally transformed the relationship between families and schools. Carrying the heavy burden of mandated reporting laws, public schools disproportionately refer Black and low-income families to the family regulation system, abdicating schools’ opportunity to serve these same families in the communities in which they reside. Rather than serving as the great equalizer, public schools increasingly contribute to the carceral state’s regulation of families. This Article argues that schools must shift their role away from the reporting and surveillance of these families, and instead directly provide and arrange for services for families. This change begins with sharply limiting or repealing mandatory reporting obligations (permitting voluntary reports in severe cases)—but that is only the start. Schools are well-positioned to create new pathways to the supports and services from which most families reported to the family regulation system might actually benefit. Schools are already a primary source of food for impoverished children, and can help ensure low-income families access all the public benefits to which they are entitled. Schools can largely refer children and families to the same services that the family regulation system can—such as mental health services and substance abuse treatment—but without that system’s coercive authority and its associated problems. Where some services are tied to the family regulation system’s involvement, then law should permit schools to refer families directly. Schools know which families need legal services to defend their housing, access benefits, obtain orders of protection—or any of the myriad of other supports that poverty lawyers can provide. This shift would tie schools to the families and communities that they serve and benefit those families and communities far more than the surveillance and policing they experience under the current family regulation system.

Reimagining Schools' Role Outside the Family Regulation System

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brianna Harvey ◽  
Josh Gupta-Kagan ◽  
Christopher Church
Keyword(s):  
Regulation System ◽  
The Family ◽  
Family Regulation

scholarly journals Somali society's concept of stewardship: A study from Islamic perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 59-86
Author(s):  
Rahma Qassim Abdurahman ◽  
Sofiah Bt. Samsudin
Keyword(s):  
Deep Understanding ◽  
Family Separation ◽  
Inductive Research ◽  
The Family ◽  
True Meaning ◽  
United Nation Report ◽  
Family Regulation ◽  
Somali Women ◽  
Family Bonding ◽  
United Nation

This research’s topic revolves around a sensitive and strange issue that usually causes imbalance in family bonding and undermining stewardship in Somali society, which is the issue of leaving maintenance of the family to the women due to lack of supporter and carer for them. Therefore, it makes the highest population of the women in that society engage in different kind of jobs, which gives them the power of controlling homes and the society. The researcher adopts the inductive research methodology to gather pieces of evidence on the custodian of stewardship and how to control the family from the word of Allah and the sayings of the prophet Muhammad, as well as books and articles written by Somali scholars and researchers and United Nation report regarding the women guardianship in Somali society. The researcher also adopts analytical method to analyse the texts gathered from the texts related to the topic, and followed by interview, which is used to collect data related to the topic from nine respondents; four among them are elites, another four are laymen, and the president of (Somali Scholars Association), then analyse the interview and derive the effects of misunderstanding the stewardship on Somali community. In conclusion, the research finds that the civil war is one of the factors contributed to strengthening women stewardship in the Somali community, and that the Somali men misunderstood the true meaning of guardianship due to lack of deep understanding of it. The researcher also observed that addiction of men to the “khat weed” is another factor contributes to the men unseriousness in the Somali community and results to family separation in the community, hence, it leads Somali women to go out for work and get more power over the men, which causes emotional and educational deprive for Somali children, and consequently leads to the behavioral deviation in them. It is also found through the research that lack of state’s security and protection for women, absence of a tangible family regulation, loss of moral supports from religious scholars.

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