How the Pandemic Became an Unplanned Experiment in Abolishing the Child Welfare System – The New Republic

The best way to keep children safe is to provide their families with the services and supports they need, in the least obtrusive way possible, an Administration for Childrens Services spokesperson wrote in an email. ACS is committed to continuing to expand services and supports to strengthen families, keep children safe, and take steps to reduce the disproportionality in the child welfare system.

But several mothers countered that when help comes attached to the same system, it wont be effective. Many activists say they are now aiming for the kind of sweeping revamping of child safety endorsed by Dorothy Roberts, a University of Pennsylvania professor. Twenty years ago, Roberts wrote a groundbreaking book critiquing child welfare policies and practices, which she links to slavery. In a June keynote speechat Columbia University, Roberts said she had since moved from hoping for child welfare reform to wanting abolition. The family policing system cant be fixed, she said, urging the audience of parents, policymakers, academics, and advocates to work collectively to dismantle the system and replace it with a radically reimagined way of caring for children and their families.

During the early months of the pandemic, Jeanette Vega, co-executive director of Rise,caught glimpses of a radically compassionate agenda for child safety. She saw it in the mutual aid networks sprouting across the city, as well as in her own Bronx neighborhood, where, pre-pandemic, people generally kept to themselves, but during lockdowns neighbors came togethertaking turns with homeschooling, sharing washing machines, and, for material needs, turning to the local grassroots groups manned not by a government agency but by each other. In New York City, we were there for each other. We connected with our friends and our neighbors, and from that our families have been safe, and our children have been safe, says Vega. We dont need system involvement.

See the original post here:

How the Pandemic Became an Unplanned Experiment in Abolishing the Child Welfare System - The New Republic