Posted July 18, 2005 to Education News | Section Home | Print

Child Welfare System Almost As Damaging As Slavery For Black Families

States frequently separate families without adequate intervention

Miami Gardens, FL (BlackNews.com) - Child welfare and family preservation expert Renee Michelle Harris believes the child welfare system in the U.S. today has lost sight of its true purpose and now inflicts more harm than help on the families it encounters. More importantly, the impact of the child welfare system on black families is horrendous; and the severity of the damage will not be felt for years to come.

"What the system is allowed to do to black and poor families is a travesty," Harris said. "The rate at which parental rights are terminated and the flimsy reasons for doing so should sound a very loud alarm all across this country. If it were happening in more affluent neighborhoods, the system would be brought to its knees."

Harris is a 16-year veteran of the child welfare system, the author of The ABCs of Authentic Work with Families and the founder of a new agency that she hopes will turn this trend around. The Institute for Authentic Social Work was developed to help the child welfare system change the way it works with families. Several states have already made significant changes to their systems. Alabama was court ordered to change and now has one of the most effective child welfare organizations in the country. California and Oregon have also had the courage to admit that the old way of doing things simply did not work and have shifted to more family-centered approaches.

Locally, Harris is pleased with the approach that Chuck Hood, DCF District Administrator in Miami, has taken as it relates to children being removed from their families. Hood has instructed his investigators to weigh the trauma of removal with children remaining in less than perfect, but good enough environments with people they know and love.

Chuck recognizes that it is more cost effective to help a family to meet basic needs than it is to bring a child into foster care, and often less damaging to the child.

"There are legitimate situations where children need to be removed from their homes in order to ensure their safety. More often than not, however, the reason that black and poor children are removed boils down to poverty because the system often equates it with neglect," she said.

Harris believes that all aspects of the system fail families. The legal representation many parents receive in dependency court cases is often inadequate and usually provided by an attorney who seems to be more interested in pleasing the judge and state agencies than protecting their clients rights. For this reason, Harris claims parents may as well be living on a plantation somewhere. "With a sense of frustration," she adds, "the ease with which the system can take children away, and keep them away permanently, really is akin to the former slave masters ability to separate black families on a whim."

Harris has developed a workbook for parents involved in the child protection system called Seven Steps to Strengthen Your Family. "I am in awe of mavericks like Richard Wexler and Dorothy Roberts who do incredible work to reform the system. I stand with them." Harris also believes it is imperative to equip parents with tools and information to help them escape the systems grasp.

Harris believes that helping families to take a look at how they became involved in the system will also help them avoid pitfalls in the future. Though she understands why, Harris said many parents spend a great deal of precious energy discussing what happened to them to anyone who will listen. Instead, she wants them to tell one person and then stop talking about it for at least 30 days. Once their children have been taken, its time to devote all of their energy to getting their children back.

The workbook takes parents through a series of activities to make them response-able, i.e. able to respond to what is happening in their lives. The workbook also has activities that help parents look at the power of forgiveness, the magic of gratitude and the benefits of creating a family mission statement - life principles that really help them to make deep, lasting changes in their family.

Harris remarks that she wants parents to become involved and informed parties to their case because they are often the least informed. "My greatest desire is for families who have been split up by the child welfare system to emerge from the experience stronger than ever. As tragic and painful as involvement in this system is, I want parents to use it to as a learning experience."