US Social Forum resolution on child welfare

Poverty is Not Neglect and We are Not Powerless:
Mothers reclaim our children back from the child welfare industry.

Across the US, child welfare services are snatching children from mothers and families, particularly families with the least, often people of color, instead of helping families with housing, childcare, protection from domestic violence, special education needs, legal assistance, family-centered treatment for substance abuse, physical and mental health, and other needs. It is established that one third of children would be home tomorrow if parents had decent housing.

Most children are far better off and safer at home than in foster care. 2/3 of those who were in foster care report sexual abuse by an adult in a foster care facility. Once in the system, it is a lengthy and sometimes impossible task to get children back. At the same time, children in real danger are often deprived of the protection they desperately need – official negligence in both directions.

Child welfare departments and the agencies they contract with have huge financial incentives to keep kids in care: the dollars flow to divide families, not to preserve and reunite them. The caseload in Chicago dropped from 50,000 to 17,000 when agencies were financially rewarded for returning children as well as keeping them in care. Corruption and profiteering are rampant in the system: the Luzerne County PA judges who took bribes to sentence children to privatized juvenile justice facilities were known for years but were not stopped.

Sexism and racism pervade the system. Mothers suffering poverty, homelessness, unemployment; immigrant women and families of women in prison and women formerly incarcerated are doing the essential survival work of keeping families together and caring for loved ones on meager resources but are not considered to be working or earning the right to custody of children.

Black children are more likely to be taken into protective custody longer, often never to return to their parents. Nationally, 32% of children in foster care are Black, whereas Black children make up only 15% of the population.

Therefore we resolve to:

- Support the work of DHS and DCFS Give Us Back Our Children, and other grassroots groups and individuals across the US struggling to keep or reclaim their children from foster care, and organizing to change child welfare industry policies and practices.

- Demand that children in real danger get the immediate protection they need.

- Call out, spell out and demand an end to the corruption and profiteering of non-profit agencies, lawyers, judges, and other officials who make money off of children’s, women’s and families’ poverty and the taking of children into foster care, juvenile facilities, prison and military recruitment.

- Demand welfare as a right for the work of caring for children and the end of the Catch-22 of mothers not being able to get welfare unless they have custody of their children, while not being able to get custody because they don’t have welfare or other income.

Action:

- Sign, endorse and circulate the DHS/DCFS: Give Us Back Our Children petition calling for child welfare to prioritize in practice the protection and reunification of families, resources for mothers to help keep families together, and other relevant demands.

- Call for an end to time limits, sanctions and other punitive measures including “work” requirements in welfare reform, as well as for an increase in benefit levels, as TANF moves through its reauthorization process in Congress, and to make welfare available immediately to all women who need it including for their children to be returned to them.

Resolution passed unanimously at the People’s Movement Assembly, The Grassroots in Haiti and the US: the Struggles for the Return of Aristide and against the Child Welfare Industry