To the Editor:
Re “To Protect Kids, We Need More Foster Care, Not Less,” by Naomi Schaefer Riley (Opinion visitor essay, Could 13):
Items like this categorical concern concerning the well-being of kids whereas ignoring the day by day harms brought on by household separation. The trauma of being ripped away from their dad and mom and positioned within the foster system with strangers typically leads to kids growing a number of challenges, together with poor psychological and bodily well being, low academic achievement, excessive charges of homelessness and early being pregnant, and involvement in felony actions.
The overreliance on household separation for kids who aren’t in any fast hazard destroys households who may have remained along with the correct help. The dad and mom we work with daily love their kids, however they typically lack entry to important sources like safe housing, youngster care, nutritious meals, psychological well being care and transportation.
In New York, allegations of neglect — many occasions due to an absence of sources — account for the vast majority of complaints towards dad and mom. We all know that Black and brown households are especially vulnerable to being separated throughout invasive and coercive investigations.
Fairly than overfunding punitive techniques that do extra hurt than good, we should put money into the well being and stability of susceptible households.
Tehra Coles
New York
The author is govt director of the Heart for Household Illustration.
To the Editor:
This essay cogently highlights the well-intentioned however typically harmful development of holding kids in dangerous settings. Sadly, it’s not solely holding kids out of foster care; it’s additionally what number of youngster welfare officers now method adoption — looking for to have kids be with their delivery household, even when it’s unsafe or when reunification efforts have failed for years.
In 1997 Congress sought to resolve the issue of kids lingering in foster care by passing the Adoption and Safe Families Act to restrict how lengthy kids spent within the youngster welfare system earlier than initiating the adoption course of. Shortly after the bipartisan regulation was handed, timelines for kids in foster care considerably decreased. Now, this law is largely ignored.
The most recent child welfare data present that 20 p.c of the almost 370,000 kids in foster care have been within the system for 3 or extra years, which implies kids spending extra time with out the love of an adoptive household.
Ryan Hanlon
Alexandria, Va.
The author is president of the Nationwide Council for Adoption.
To the Editor:
I’ve labored within the youngster welfare system as an lawyer representing foster youth within the Bay Space for 18 years. The best flaw of the system, for my part, is the kid welfare company’s failure to determine household or household pals instantly upon elimination of a kid from their dad or mum(s), so the kid can safely stay within the care of somebody they know, whether or not briefly or long run.
The act of eradicating a baby from their dad or mum(s) and putting them in a foster dwelling with “strangers” has documented and apparent damaging penalties to a baby’s emotional, bodily and psychological well being. The time that youngster welfare companies typically take to determine, contact and clear a relative or household good friend for placement is problematic. Extra emphasis and sources should be dedicated to this stage of the case.
A society that unequivocally cares about kids would get rid of limitations that youngster welfare companies create to bypass and delay putting a baby who they decide should be faraway from parental care with a well-known face. These of us working on this discipline witness the traumatic influence of this flawed system on kids and households day by day.
Vicki Trapalis
San Francisco
To the Editor:
Naomi Schaefer Riley attributes kids’s deaths to efforts by youngster welfare companies to maintain at-risk households collectively. Nevertheless, she fails to account for the various cities and states the place vital reductions in kids getting into foster care haven’t led to any uptick in youngster maltreatment fatalities, corresponding to New York Metropolis, Texas and New Jersey.
Knowledge exhibits that the 2 traits described — efforts to cut back household separation and elevated fatalities — aren’t taking place in the identical locations. Texas, for example, has not too long ago decreased each foster care placement and fatalities, whereas each have elevated in Georgia.
Analysis published in the Children and Youth Services Review exhibits that horrific youngster fatalities like Phoenix Castro’s, cited by Ms. Riley, characterize “excessive outliers,” and that sensationalized media protection results in “foster care panics,” when youngster welfare companies make politically conservative selections that separate households unnecessarily, traumatizing kids.
It’s necessary that we perceive the information about these tragic however uncommon deaths and the insurance policies that truly shield kids.
Nora McCarthy
New York
The author is the director of the NYC Household Coverage Undertaking, a suppose tank.
To the Editor:
The creator makes use of the age-old tactic of highlighting an outlier case the place a baby tragically dies within the care of their dad or mum as justification for erring on the aspect of warning and eradicating kids from their households.
The fact is that in contrast to the horror tales which can be portrayed within the media, bodily and sexual abuse accounted for less than 17 percent of the children that were removed from their dad and mom final yr. Most removals are resulting from “neglect,” a nebulous and imprecise time period as a result of poverty is often conflated with neglect.
And for these kids who’re positioned in foster care, security is much from assured. One study discovered that kids in foster care have been 42 p.c extra prone to die than these within the basic inhabitants. Multiple studies present that foster kids expertise bodily and sexual abuse at larger charges than the final inhabitants. Many kids have died in foster care.
Our society continues to perpetuate the well-debunked fable that foster care ensures that kids will dwell higher lives. As Naomi Schaefer Riley admits, “Foster care just isn’t a panacea.” That’s the one factor we will agree upon.
Shanta Trivedi
Baltimore
The author is college director of the Sayra and Neil Meyerhoff Heart for Households, Youngsters and the Courts and an assistant professor of regulation on the College of Baltimore Faculty of Legislation.