A child-welfare expert argues that "Abolish Foster Care" activists are pushing policies that harm vulnerable children, including ending mandated reporters and drug testing. Black and Native American children experience maltreatment at much higher rates than their population share, often linked to family structure. The expert warns that pressure toward family reunification sometimes forces children from stable foster homes back to parents with substance-abuse histories.
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courts and racial activists are work— are ruining— or excuse me, are wrecking young lives. Ruining would have been just as fine. Wrecking is true. So is the biggest culprit the, the racial activists, or all three are, are equal culprits?
Oh, I think they're all three equal culprits. Um, certainly the racial ideology that is gripping this country is making things much worse for children. You now have a movement out there called the Abolish Foster Care movement that has come up in parallel with the Defund the Police movement. These are people who think we don't need child protection at all, and they think that the real victims here are the parents. They, they say that our foster care system is structurally racist. We should stop having mandated reporters like teachers and doctors call in signs of abuse or collect in children. They think we should end drug testing of infants, you know, to find out if they've been born substance exposed. They even think that we should stop having police intervene in domestic violence cases because that's how we often find out when children are at high risk in a situation. And they point to the disparate racial numbers in the foster care system. They say there are too many Black kids in the foster care system, so we should just eliminate it. Now, if you want to understand the true reason why there are so many Black children in the foster care system, you have to look at the numbers of children who being maltreated, who are being abused and neglected every year. Black children are twice as likely in this country to suffer from maltreatment, and they are 3 times as likely to die from maltreatment. Those are numbers that are not just about your racial perspective. Those are numbers about children's lives. And if you think Black lives matter, you think— you should think Black children's lives matter, and you should be willing to do what the system has to in order to protect them from bad actors.
That is a good, uh, actually good, a good motto for people to adopt. Black children lives, children's lives matter. I wonder how that would go over. So the, is the primary problem or the disproportionate problem with Black children?
Um, Black children, Native American children also suffer maltreatment at a much higher percentage than is their representation in the population.
Are we good? Now I do. Yeah, you— I lost you. Okay, go ahead. So Native American, black—
that the Native American— yeah, Native American, black children are both represented in the child welfare system at a much higher rate than their percentage in the population. It's interesting that Hispanic children are not. They are represented at about actually their rate in the population. And one reason for this is is they are much more likely to live in two-parent households and in two-parent married households. If you are living with a single mother and a non-relative male, as a disproportionate number of black children in this country are, you are at much higher risk for abuse. You are 11 times more likely to suffer from child abuse as living in a two-parent married family.
Makes perfect sense. What about the issue, and I, I, I, This is very vague to me, but I, I do recall, I think, hearing about this, how many people have been foster parents, bonded healthfully with the child, and want to adopt the child and are prevented from doing so. Is that an issue?
That is absolutely an issue. We have a bias in our system toward family preservation and family reunification, which makes sense obviously for most families in the sense that children belong with their families. But these are people who have so badly mistreated them and are unwilling or unable to care for them. In many cases, it has a lot to do with drug addiction, frankly. Our drug, our substance abuse crisis is driving our child welfare crisis in this country. But we have this idea that no matter what, no matter if a child has bonded with foster parents for years, 2 years, 3 years, 4 years, if a parent suddenly cleans up their act, we should send that child back no matter how attached. Securely attached they are to the foster family. And we know so much about the damage neurologically that that can do to a child to rip them away from the family that they have known, the adults they have come to depend on, and just say, oh, the thing that matters most is that these are the people who you share blood with, or that these are the people whose skin color matches yours. That is another part of the racial ideology that is driving where we place children.
I will say, in answer to my opening question to you, I would have gone on antidepressants. You are better than me.
Yeah, I mean, I have to say, you know, the one bright spot in this story for me was visiting with a lot of churches and faith-based organizations that were taking on this work and really have revolutionized foster care and adoption in recent years. They have just done such amazing work recruiting, training, and supporting foster families, and they are committed to making sure that children have these safe, stable, loving homes that they need, you know, if only we weren't trying to drive these faith-based institutions out of the foster care and adoption space.
You know, when you, when you said earlier that, you know, they, they place great emphasis on blood and skin color, so I can't tell you the contempt I have for that. One of my two sons is adopted, adopted at birth, and my line all of my life has been I am infinitely more interested in passing on my values than my seed. I don't give a damn about blood. I think it's primitive even for people to give it the value, and skin color, that's even more primitive.
So it's true, that's pretty representative of American— the American people generally. I think that most Americans think, yes, what's important is that you have a family to care for you, not that your skin color matches. Absolutely right.
But you, you would be attacked if you said that publicly. Some people would say that's white supremacist talk, that beautiful idea that you and I just enunciated.
Anyway, you have a white savior complex.
I, I, yes. Well, God bless you. You do great work, and I, I don't say that to a lot of people, so keep it up.
