scholarly journals Twentieth Century Black and Native Activism Against the Child Taking System

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Briggs
Keyword(s):  
Foster Care ◽  
Child Welfare ◽  
State Legislature ◽  
Child Welfare System ◽  
Welfare System ◽  
Indian Child ◽  
Children In Foster Care ◽  
Care Giving ◽  
Welfare Systems ◽  
Child Welfare Systems

This Article argues that the historical record supports activism that takes the abolition of the child welfare system as its starting point, rather than its reform. It explores the birth of the modern child welfare system in the 1950s as part of the white supremacist effort to punish Black communities that sought desegregation of schools and other public accommodations; and Native communities that fought tribal termination and the taking of indigenous land. Beginning with the “segregation package” of laws passed by the Louisiana state legislature in 1960, the Article shows how cutting so-called “illegitimate” children off the welfare program, called Aid to Dependent Children, (ADC) and placing those whom their mothers could no longer support in foster care was an explicit response to school desegregation. While the National Urban League initially mounted a formidable national and international mutual aid effort, “Operation Feed the Babies,” its ultimate response—appealing to the federal government to reform the welfare and child welfare systems— backfired in disastrous ways. The Eisenhower administration responded by providing federal funds for a program it called ADC-foster care, giving states resources to dramatically expand the foster care system, resulting in hundreds of thousands of Black children in foster homes within a year. Native Tribal nations, in contrast, fought throughout the late 1960s and 70s to get states out of Indian child welfare. After a decade of activism, in 1978, they succeeded in passing the Indian Child Welfare Act, which put American Indian kids under the jurisdiction of tribal courts instead of the states’. Over the next decades, the number of Native children in foster care shrank dramatically. While history rarely offers clear guidance for the present, these two stories strongly suggest the limits of reform for state child welfare systems, and the wisdom of contemporary activists who call for abolition.

Racial Disproportionality and Disparities in the Child Welfare System: Why Do They Exist, and What Can Be Done to Address Them?

2020 ◽  
Vol 692 (1) ◽  
pp. 253-274
Author(s):  
Alan J. Dettlaff ◽  
Reiko Boyd
Keyword(s):  
Child Welfare ◽  
Black Children ◽  
Child Welfare System ◽  
Welfare System ◽  
Children And Families ◽  
Children Of Color ◽  
Racial Disproportionality ◽  
Welfare Systems ◽  
External Causes ◽  
Child Welfare Systems

Children of color are overrepresented in the child welfare system, and Black children have been most significantly impacted by this racial disproportionality. Racial disproportionality in child welfare exists because of influences that are both external to child welfare systems and part of the child welfare system. We summarize the causes of racial disproportionality, arguing that internal and external causes of disproportional involvement originate from a common underlying factor: structural and institutional racism that is both within child welfare systems and part of society at large. Further, we review options for addressing racial disproportionality, arguing that it needs to be rectified because of the harm it causes Black children and families and that forcible separation of children from their parents can no longer be viewed as an acceptable form of intervention for families in need.

scholarly journals Options for Africa’s Child Welfare Systems from Nigeria’s Unsustainable Multicultural Models

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 1118
Author(s):  
Thomas Akintayo
Keyword(s):  
Child Welfare ◽  
Child Welfare System ◽  
Welfare System ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Response Options ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Welfare Systems ◽  
Mind Maps ◽  
Child Welfare Systems

The sustainability of Africa’s existing child welfare systems remains uncertain, potentially owing to the maltreatment of children amid the competing worldviews of the continent’s indigenous and non-indigenous practices and international childcare models. This article focuses on Nigeria’s unsustainable multicultural child welfare system in order to highlight the inherent challenges of child welfare systems in Africa and proffer remedies. Seven discernible trends derived from available indigenous sources of information and scholarly literature on Nigeria are used as mind maps to describe and discuss Nigeria’s multicultural characteristics and childcare practices. From the discussion, the country’s child welfare challenges manifest in the following forms: ethnocultural, or more specifically, ethnoreligious diversity; the infiltration of Nigeria by non-native worldviews; colonial legacies; vacillating post-colonial social policies; conceptual ambiguities in non-indigenous welfare terminologies; and persistent unnecessary professional rivalries, which are also present in other African countries. As remedies, three transformative response options for the sustainability of the Nigerian child welfare system and those of other African countries are recommended: embracing cultural relativity regarding child maltreatment, leveraging the transformative and expanded mandates of the social work profession for the development of effective and sustainable child welfare systems, and using research and systems thinking as a driver for transforming professional rivalries into multidisciplinary approaches.

scholarly journals Using Peacemaking Circles to Indigenize Tribal Child Welfare

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Van Schilfgaarde ◽  
Brett Lee Shelton
Keyword(s):  
Child Welfare ◽  
Extended Family ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Child Welfare System ◽  
Welfare System ◽  
Reciprocal Relationship ◽  
Federal Policies ◽  
Welfare Systems ◽  
Circle Processes ◽  
Child Welfare Systems

Historical child welfare policies explicitly aimed to exterminate Indigenous culture and disrupt tribal cohesion. The remnants of these policies form the foundation for the contemporary child welfare system. These policies view the child as an isolated and interchangeable asset, over which parents enjoy property-like rights, and in which the child welfare system is incentivized to “save” children from perceived economic, cultural, and geographic ills through an adversarial process. Extended family, community members, and cultural connections have minimal voice or value. These underpinnings inform federal policies that influence all child welfare systems, including tribal child welfare systems. The result is that tribal child welfare systems perpetuate the individual, rights-centric, adversarial child welfare system that harms Indigenous families. Indigenous children have the right to maintain connections to their Indigenous family, tribal nation, culture, and cultural education. These rights translate into obligations the community owes to the child to ensure that these connections are robust. Tradition-based systems of dispute resolution—frequently called “peacemaking,” among other names, but which we will call “circle processes”—offer a hopeful alternative. Circle processes are rooted in an Indigenous worldview that perceives an issue, particularly a child welfare issue, as evidence of community imbalance that directly impacts the community, and conversely, imparts an obligation on the community to respond. Through the circle, family and community can complete their natural reciprocal relationship. Tribal child welfare has the potential to be a transformative system that promotes community, family, and children’s health and the self-determination and sovereignty of tribes. This Article outlines the ways in which the modern tribal child welfare system has been structured to compartmentalize families and perpetuate historical federal policies of Indian family separation. This Article then suggests that circle processes are a framework for re-Indigenizing the tribal child welfare system to not just improve outcomes (for which it has the potential to do), but to also honor the interconnected, responsibility oriented worldview of Indigenous communities. Ultimately, however, tribes should lead that re-Indigenization process, whether through a circle process framework or otherwise.

scholarly journals Mechanisms of American Indian and Alaska Native Inequality in Child Welfare Across U.S. States.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Edwards ◽  
Theresa Rocha Beardall
Keyword(s):  
Foster Care ◽  
Child Welfare ◽  
American Indian ◽  
Alaska Native ◽  
Child Welfare System ◽  
Welfare System ◽  
Indian Child ◽  
White Children ◽  
Family Separation ◽  
Child Welfare Agency

American Indian and Alaska Native children are separated from their families by state child welfare agencies at exceptionally high rates. This study connects contemporary trends in Native family separation to histories of Indian child removal, and provides insights into the geographies and institutional sites where inequalities emerge. We find that the total number of AIAN children in foster care or adoptive homes in states with large Native populations has increased since the passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act (1978). We find that risks of child welfare system contact are highest for AIAN infants, and that risk is highly variable across states. Our estimates show that in high risk states at 2014 - 2018 levels of risk, more than half of AIAN children will ever be investigated by a child welfare agency, more than one in five will experience a substantiated maltreatment case, and more than one in five will ever enter foster care. We further find that child welfare agency case processing exacerbates inequality. AIAN children are more likely than white children to enter foster care, conditional on experiencing a substantiated maltreatment case, than are white children. These exceptionally high levels of risk indicate that the crisis of Indian family separation is ongoing. For AIAN children in states like Minnesota, Alaska, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Oklahoma, contact with the child welfare system is a routine part of growing up.

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.

Trauma and Children

2020 ◽  
pp. 168-187
Author(s):  
David R. Grove ◽  
Gilbert J. Greene ◽  
Mo Yee Lee
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Foster Care ◽  
Child Welfare ◽  
Child Welfare System ◽  
Welfare System ◽  
Trauma Survivors ◽  
Duration Of Stay ◽  
Case Examples ◽  
Family Approach ◽  
Biological Family

Trauma and children placed in foster care is examined. Statistics related to foster care placement, duration of stay, and number of disrupted placements are offered. How these factors exacerbate the problems of trauma survivors in the child welfare system is explored. A family to family approach is described. Several case examples are offered covering numerous treatment issues including how to stabilize at-risk foster placements, how to recruit and include biological family of children placed in foster care, and how to enlist therapeutic help from biological family members when their child is placed in foster care.

scholarly journals Self-assessment of the quality of life of children and adolescents in the child welfare system of Serbia

2012 ◽  
Vol 69 (6) ◽  
pp. 469-474 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maja Damnjanovic ◽  
Aneta Lakic ◽  
Dejan Stevanovic ◽  
Ana Jovanovic ◽  
Jasna Jancic ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Foster Care ◽  
Child Welfare ◽  
General Population ◽  
Children And Adolescents ◽  
Residential Care ◽  
Child Welfare System ◽  
Welfare System ◽  
Care Group

Background/Aim. Children and adolescents who enter a child welfare system are at higher risk of suffering from mental disorders, physical health, and/or social and educational problems than the general population of the same age is. This study was organized with the aim to evaluate the general characteristics of quality of life (QOL) in children and adolescents living in residential and foster care in Serbia. Methods. Two hundred and sixteen children and adolescents, aged 8-18 years, from residential and foster care and 238 children and adolescents from the general population participated in the study. QOL was assessed using the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory (PedsQL) - Serbian version. Three groups were created: residential care group (RCG), foster care group (FCG), and control group (children and adolescents from biological families - CG). Descriptive data were calculated for all questionnaires? scores, while t-test and ANOVA were used to compare them. Results. The mean value of the total PedsQL was lower in the RCG, 67.47 ? 17.75, than in the FCG and the CG, 88.33 ? 11.27 and 80.74 ? 11.23, respectively. Additionally, the RCG reported lower all PedsQL Scale scores, but the lowest value was for the psychosocial domain. These differences were statistically significant (F value ranged from 17.3 to 49.89, p < 0.000). However, only the scores of the RCG were statistically different from the FCG and the CG, while the differences between the FCG and the CG were statistically insignificant (p > 0.05). Conclusion. Children and adolescents living in residential care have significantly poorer QOL than those living in foster care or in biological families. On the other side, QOL in children and adolescents from foster care is similar to the one of those living in biological families.

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