Failure to accept federal funds shows disdain for families

Thanks to federal reimbursement and reduced preventive care costs, high-quality family defense pays for itself. (Getty Images)

The federal government will reimburse district courts for some of the cost of providing attorneys to poor children and parents if the state wants to investigate those families for alleged child abuse and possibly take away the children. Thanks to Some excellent reports by Capital Chronicle We now know that one in five Indiana counties did not apply for this money.

Conditioned by decades of horror stories about parents brutally beating, torturing, or killing their children, many readers may ask: “So what?” In fact, that may be why many districts don’t bother collecting the money. Overburdened lawyers often have so little time and so many clients that families are left almost literally defenseless. Maybe these countries want it to stay that way.

The problem here is the one that has plagued America’s entire war on child abuse for decades: Whenever we attack “bad parents,” the blow falls on their children.

This is because most cases are nothing like horror stories. in Indiana in 2022, 85% of the timeWhen the children were placed in foster care, their parents were not even present. accused physical or sexual abuse. Forty percent of the time there was not even an allegation of drug use.

Much more common situations are Family poverty is confused with neglect.

history of indiana

Indiana is one of America’s worst offenders when it comes to family separation. Department of Children’s Services consistently boasts modest improvements, but in 2022 Indiana is still taking children at some rate 65% above national average. There is no evidence that Indiana children are 65% safer than the national average.

Black children are hardest hit and placed in foster care over 50% Rates in Indiana child population. When it comes to researching Black families in Indiana leading the nation – nearly four in five Black Hoosier children will have to endure the trauma of a child abuse investigation before they turn 18.

Consider how this harms children:

everyone who remembers screams of pain The rate of children being separated from their families at the Mexican border speaks to how traumatizing it is to take children away from everyone they know and love. Yes, DCS caseworkers mean well. But the children they take away also cry for the same reasons. No wonder that study after study He found that in typical cases, children left in their own homes fare even better than similarly mistreated children placed in foster care. And yes, this includes situations where substance abuse is the issue.

The damage isn’t just emotional. Multiple studies Abuse occurs in one-quarter to one-third of foster families. The rate of abuse in group homes and institutions is even worse.

And all the time, money, and effort spent on false allegations, frivolous lawsuits, and poverty cases are actually stolen from finding the small number of children in danger. This is almost always the real reason for the horror stories that rightly make headlines.

a better way

There are many ways to do better: One of the most effective ways is through high-quality family advocacy. Under this model, families retain an attorney with a reasonable caseload, their own social workers, and sometimes a parent attorney who has experienced the system firsthand.

No, this is not to drive away “bad parents”; It is to create alternatives to the cookie-cutter “service plans” often offered by agencies like DCS, which are not actual services. Once again, The research is clear.: This type of defense reduces preventative maintenance without compromising security. This is the main reason why the federal government now allows partial refunds.

For example, 22-month-old Nova Bryant of Indiana was taken from her parents. just dying in foster care. There does not appear to be any allegation that the parents abused Nova, only that they were unable to cope with her special needs. We don’t know what kind of legal representation Nova’s parents had, maybe it was top notch and nothing would have helped. But we do know that Nova lived and died in Clay County, one of the counties that refused to seek federal funding.

High-quality family defense also pays off, thanks to federal reimbursement and reduced foster care costs. The paperwork is minimal but provides clues as to how well or poorly the courts provide defense to the vulnerable.

Federal funds come from the same source as federal aid for placing children in foster care. Obtaining preventive care funds is much more complicated. But I’ll bet no one at Indiana child welfare will turn down the money.

One can’t help but wonder how someone can investigate the enormous damage caused by this system and turn down federal aid for legal aid, as Johnson County Court Administrator Shena Johnson does: “(T)he system we have works well.”

There are a lot of kids who disagree.

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