Seize the moment to help vulnerable families

As communities of color rise up against police brutality and the other day-to-day brutalities they face, we are reminded again about the dangers of walking while black, driving while black, birdwatching while black and doing almost every other daily activity-while-black. But there’s one area of profound bias against people of color that keeps getting left out: parenting while black.

For families of color, agencies like New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services can be every bit as oppressive as the police, and even more powerful. Police can stop a black teenager on the street, throw him against a wall and frisk him. ACS can march right into the home, stripsearch a black child and walk out with him, consigning the child to the chaos of foster care.

As with so much else in American life, COVID-19 has highlighted the problem — and worsened it. Even as journalists write about racist behavior by police, we see one story and opinion column after another telling us that the moment overwhelmingly white, middle-class professional “eyes” no longer are on overwhelmingly poor, nonwhite children, their parents will unleash savagery upon them in — their words — “pandemic” proportions.

Most of the stories urge us to be extra vigilant by perverting video chats and food drops into ways to spy on our neighbors.

All this represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what we call child abuse in America and what causes it. Nearly 8 million children a year are the subjects of reports alleging child abuse. But nationwide, of every 100 such reports, 45 are so absurd they are screened out. Another 46 turn out to be false reports — subjecting children to traumatic investigations for no reason. Another six are cases in which workers suspect there may be “neglect” — something that often is just another word for poverty.

Multiple studies have found that 30% of America’s foster children could be home right now if their parents had decent housing. Many more studies find that even small amounts of additional cash significantly reduce cases of what agencies call “neglect.”

Sexual abuse and all forms of physical abuse, from excessive spanking to torture, represent three percent of all reports. Fatalities represent 0.02%.

Some of the cases represented by that 3% are as horrifying as they are rare, and the only acceptable goal is zero. But our attempt to find the needles in this huge haystack has backfired.

Investigators for agencies like ACS have more power than police. Their approach can best be called “knock and strip.” Effectively, they can enter homes and stripsearch children without a warrant. Say no, and they can come back with the police and even break down the door. Even when the entry is less drastic, the terror of the investigation is something a child may never forget. Worst case: The ACS caseworker takes away the children onthe-spot without so much as asking a judge first.

That means they’ll enter a system from which more young people graduate to prison than graduate college; a system in which the odds are at least one in four they’ll be abused in foster care itself. No wonder study after study finds that, in typical cases, children left in their own homes do better even than comparably maltreated children in foster care.

None of this is necessary to reduce child abuse. On the contrary, fear of “mandated reporters” calling ACS scares families away from seeking help — and overloads the agency with so many false reports they have less time to find children in real danger.

Of course there is reason for concern that the stress of coping with coronavirus and poverty can lead a small number of parents to lash out against their children, sometimes severely. But instead of doubling down on the same failed approaches, we can seize this moment to reduce the number of such tragedies by remaking child welfare in the same way activists are demanding we remake policing.

Wexler is executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform.