Child welfare's paradox.

• Author: Roberts, Dorothy E.

INTRODUCTION I. THE THREE PARADOXES A. Caseworkers as Investigators and Helpers B. Foster Parents as Greedy and Altruistic C. Parents as Subjects of Regulation and Recipients of Support II. IMPLICATIONS OF FAMILY RELIANCE ON KINSHIP CARE III. CHILD WELFARE'S PARADOX AND THE FLAWED SAFETY NET CONCLUSION INTRODUCTION

Researchers and government officials now recognize racial disproportionality as a pressing problem facing the child welfare system. (1) In this country, most children in foster care are children of color. (2) Black children are especially overrepresented in the child welfare system: (3) they make up about one-third of the nation's foster care population, despite representing only 15 percent of the nation's children. (4) A black child is four times as likely as a white child to be placed in foster care. (5)

Although alarming, these statistics do not reveal the spatial dynamics of the child welfare system's racial disparities. (6) State custody of children has a racial geography. In the nation's cities, child protection cases are concentrated in communities of color. (7) Many poor black neighborhoods in particular have extremely high rates of involvement by public child welfare agencies, especially with respect to placement in foster care. (8) In 1997, for example, one in ten children in Central Harlem was in foster care. (9) In Chicago, most child protection cases are clustered in a few zip code areas, which are almost exclusively African American. (10) Such overrepresentation of black children in the foster care population represents considerable state supervision and dissolution of families concentrated in these neighborhoods. (11) Moreover, racial differences in foster care placement rates affect more than an individual child's risk of placement; they also affect his or her chances of growing up in a neighborhood where foster care placement is prevalent. (12) The racial geography of child welfare, then, "makes the child welfare system a distinctively different institution for white and black children in America." (13)

What is the sociopolitical impact of this spatial concentration of child welfare supervision in poor, black neighborhoods? Although researchers have investigated the reasons behind racial disparities in the child welfare system, (14) the community impact of these disparities remains obscure. (15) During the summer of 2005, I conducted a small case study to begin to explore the effects of concentrated child welfare agency involvement in black neighborhoods. (16) The study conducted and analyzed the results of in-depth interviews with twenty-five black women living in Woodlawn, a black neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. Woodlawn is an area exposed to a particularly high level of involvement by the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS). The study sought to evaluate how the involvement of child welfare agencies affects community and civic life and shapes residents' attitudes about government and self-governance. (17)

Almost all of Woodlawn's 27,000 residents are African American. (18) Furthermore, "Woodlawn is also one of Chicago's poorest neighborhoods.... Half of the female-headed households with children in Woodlawn live in poverty." (19) Additionally, the neighborhood has one of the highest rates of foster care placement in Chicago. At the end of 2005, almost 200 of Woodlawn's approximately 9,000 children were in state-supervised substitute care, living either with relatives or strangers. (20)

Conversely, in the vast majority of Chicago neighborhoods, the foster care rate is less than half of Woodlawn's. (21) Although several other poor African American neighborhoods, such as Grand Boulevard and the Near West Side, have double Woodlawn's rate, (22) there is not a single white neighborhood in Chicago whose children are placed in foster care at a level even approaching these black neighborhoods. (23)

Although the study set out to investigate the ways in which intense child welfare agency involvement affected residents' social networks and civic involvement, I discovered three profound contradictions in residents' relationships to the child welfare system. In particular, resident responses highlighted paradoxical views on the role of caseworkers, foster parents, and parents. They described caseworkers as both meddling investigators and appreciated helpers. (24) They believed that some foster parents take care of children for the money, but also that some need more money to take proper care of their foster children. (25) Lastly, they resented child protection agencies' pervasive regulation of their lives, yet relied on the resources that these agencies provide. (26)

Scholars have noted the tension in the child welfare system's design. It is a system that seeks both to help and punish poor parents, based on a philosophy grounded in child protection. (27) The residents' responses exemplify this tension and show how it has intensified as the safety net dwindles in poor inner-city neighborhoods and changes the child welfare system's institutional function. Part I examines the three paradoxes that emerged from responses of residents about DCFS involvement in their neighborhood. Part II considers the implications of these paradoxes in light of the growth of kinship foster care. Part III then discusses the relationship between child welfare's fundamental contradiction, arising from the system's dual functions as both investigator and service provider, to the dwindling safety net in poor inner-city neighborhoods. Families in these neighborhoods must increasingly rely on coercive state agencies for the economic support they need. Thus, the child welfare system's racial geography is connected to the geography of social service provision. (28) I conclude that the growing yet overlooked role of child welfare agencies in the shrinking welfare state heightens the paradox inherent in the U.S. approach to child welfare, which centers on the punitive regulation of poor parents, and makes change more imperative than ever.

1. THE THREE PARADOXES

   The residents' responses revealed three key contradictions in views about DCFS involvement in Woodlawn and the role of caseworkers, foster parents, and parents. The women described caseworkers as both investigators and helpers, foster parents as both greedy and altruistic, and parents as both subjects of regulation and recipients of support. These contradictory views are all related to child welfare agencies' dual nature, which ties services for families to investigation, coercion, and child removal.

   1. Caseworkers as Investigators and Helpers

      The women interviewed in Woodlawn poignantly expressed the tension created by caseworkers' dual roles as both investigator and supporter of neighborhood families. The child welfare system employs social workers who are responsible for providing services to families. Yet, these same service providers also investigate parents alleged to have maltreated their children and coerce parents to comply with rehabilitative measures by threatening to take away their children permanently. (29) Social work professor Leroy Pelton emphasized the threat to family integrity created by the child welfare system's dual function of simultaneously coercing parents while trying to help them. (30) In particular, he observed:

      The investigative/coercive/child-removal role diminishes, hampers, and overwhelms the helping role within the dual-role structure of public child-welfare agencies, as huge and increasingly larger portions of their budgets are devoted to investigation and foster care, with little money left over for preventive and supportive services to combat the impermanency of children's living arrangements. (31) Thus, agencies fail to maintain a balance between coercion and support of families because their intimidating role tends to dominate.

      Some Woodlawn residents viewed caseworkers with suspicion and believed that they unnecessarily disrupted family and community life. (32) They felt that caseworkers' investigations were often unwarranted and their responses overzealous. (33) Some portrayed caseworkers as spies who infiltrated the neighborhood to gather evidence against parents. According to twenty-six-year-old Cassie:

      [Y]ou got to watch what you do and what you say and all this, 'cause you don't know who you could be talking to. Out on the street you don't know who you could be talking to.... She could be DCFS, writing down stuff, taking notes, all of that, and you don't know who she is. So you have to be careful. You have to be very careful. (34) Parents perceive caseworkers' use of a foreign standard to judge neighborhood families as part of the problem. Pearl, a counselor who provided services for DCFS, but who also had relatives and neighbors involved with the agency, said, "I think sometimes the [DCFS caseworkers] who do the interviews come from a different walk of life, you know, and when they come from a different walk of life, they see things a little different than people within the home community." (35)

      Additionally, caseworkers' investigative roles spread beyond those performed by DCFS to influence relationships in the neighborhood. Many of the women reported distrust among neighbors created by the pervasive DCFS surveillance of families. (36) Respondents believed that residents often falsely accused others of child abuse to seek retribution against them. Tiara, a twenty-four-year-old whose close friend was the subject of a DCFS investigation, complained:

      Teachers are even using it for revenge too. If you even went to school with these teachers and they made it all right in their career and now they're teaching in your community and your kids is one of their students, that if she didn't like you unknowingly all this time since high school ... you got teachers that set you up at the end of the school year. (37) In this fashion, the presence of DCFS has not only bred distrust between...