A concept some of us have been pushing for decades has suddenly become a centerpiece of the child welfare debate: Family policing agencies routinely confuse poverty with neglect. It follows, therefore, that an enormous amount of what we call “child maltreatment” can be solved through a two-step process.
1. Find the poor people.
2. Send money.
Research bears this out. Or, as one speaker at a recent symposium put it “It’s not rocket science.”
That was challenged by another speaker at the same symposium: Michael Wald, professor emeritus of law at Stanford University.
Wald is not some hidebound defender of the child welfare status quo. On the contrary, he was challenging that status quo before almost anyone in the modern era. His model law to curb coercive intervention into families – written in 1975 – was the basis of several recommendations in my book, published in 1990.
But now, if we just send money, Wald fears “We’re going to have a conference 50 years from now that’s going to be the same.” Said Wald:
“Actually, helping people is rocket science. Transferring money is an easy and a very important part; but parents with a lot of money still struggle with parenting, still struggle with a lot of issues with children … [In] New Zealand, which has much more of a social welfare system and strengths system than we do in all kinds of ways, 25% of all children born in New Zealand are referred to CPS there.”
Other developed nations with what we could consider low child poverty rates also take away a lot of children. So with the federal government now waging what, were it a movie, might be called “War on Poverty II – This Time We’ll Send Cash!” we can expect three things to happen:
1. Investigations of alleged “neglect” will go down.
2. They will not go down nearly as much as they should.
3. People who lack Wald’s dedication, and intellectual honesty will rush forward, fingers wagging to say, “See? It wasn’t poverty!” Or “See? We don’t take children because of poverty alone!”
Unsurprisingly, I see a different lesson from New Zealand and from other countries that may have high rates of removal and low child poverty rates.
A New Zealand study did indeed find that 23.5% of children in that country will be forced to endure a child abuse investigation at some point in their childhoods. But the study that found those numbers was, in fact, an effort to compare New Zealand to the United States – where the figure is 37.4%.
Richard Wexler is Executive Director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform.
So before we call in the rocket scientists, consider what these data really suggest: If the United States had a social safety net like the one in New Zealand, the number of children subjected to a child abuse investigation could be cut by more than 35%. That would be roughly 1.2 million fewer investigations every year.
The gap was even wider for foster care placements. The study estimated that 3.1% of New Zealand children will have to endure foster care placement at some point, compared with 5.9% of American children.
So if anything, New Zealand’s experience reinforces the idea that poverty is routinely confused with neglect and a stronger social safety net reduces involvement with family policing.
But why isn’t New Zealand doing better? Perhaps because a stronger social safety net doesn’t cure racism. In New Zealand 16.5% of the total population is Maori. But in 2019, 56% of all children taken from their homes were Maori. That’s a worse record than in the United States.
There also are relatively homogeneous countries, such as Sweden, which appear to have high rates of children in foster care. There are a number of possible reasons:
By American standards, Sweden doesn’t have a lot of poverty. But what about by Swedish standards? By their own standards 16.4% of Swedes live in “relative poverty.” So why wouldn’t Swedish caseworkers confuse poverty with neglect just as their American counterparts do?
A relatively low child poverty rate may paint a target on the backs of those who remain poor. British researchers found what they call an “inverse intervention law.” Children living in a poor neighborhood that is part of a more affluent region are more likely to come under child protective services surveillance than children in an equally poor neighborhood that’s part of a poor region.
Perhaps caseworkers who see less poverty are more likely to confuse the poverty they do see with neglect. If so, then if America finally gets a grip on child poverty, the reduction in neglect reports and investigations won’t be as great as it should be.
Wald also is correct, of course, when he says that “parents with a lot of money still struggle with parenting.” Yet we don’t see their children in foster care. However arduous the struggle, money guarantees that, if there is a solution, parents with money will be able to buy that solution.
In one sense, yes, high rates of child removal are not due to poverty alone. There’s also racism. And arrogance. And unfettered power with no accountability or due process. But dealing with the poverty seems like a good place to start. Get that part right and the rocket scientists can stick to building better rockets.
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Richard Wexler is Executive Director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, www.nccpr.org.
