Ighost The stranger is knocking on the door and threatening to take your children away if you don’t let them search your home for evidence that your children are unsafe. Traumatic scenarios like this are inflicted by child protective services on nearly 3.5 million children in the United States each year, ProPublica and NBC News reported in 2022. investigation. more than that 37 percent It is estimated that 53 percent of children in the U.S. have experienced such a search in their childhood, according to a 2017 study that included 53 percent of African American children.

Contrary to what these statistics suggest, abuse is not very common in families in the United States. Only 5 percent of CPS investigations find evidence of physical or sexual abuse. In fact, the vast majority of reports that triggered these searches were not about suspected abuse but about alleged neglect. This is a broad category that consists of a lack of healthy food, clothing, hygiene, shelter, supervision, or medical care—in other words, the impact of poverty.

Indeed a 2022 report The American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch found that “poverty-related conditions, including housing instability and inadequate resources, are used as evidence of parental unfitness to support claims of neglect or to justify family separation or termination of parental rights.”

Punishing poverty and combining it with abuse or neglect has serious consequences. Both parents and children traumatized When children are removed and placed in foster care permanent damage children’s ability to trust, form positive social bonds, and believe that society is there to help rather than harm.

These heartbreaking breakups happen all too often; On average, a child is removed from home and placed in foster care every three minutes; this leads to approximately 200,000 new foster care placements in 2022. Even initial investigations (which many more families undergo) can leave indelible scars as both parents and children later live with the fear of being arbitrarily torn apart. An unexpected knock at the door can be frightening.

The vast majority of reports that triggered these searches were not related to suspected abuse; was due to allegations of negligence.

This human cost is accompanied by a high financial toll. USA spent more in 2020 than in 2020 $31.4 billion supporting a child welfare system that, despite its name and good intentions, often causes irreparable harm to children and families. Less than a quarter of this amount directly supports foster children. The rest funds investigators, caseworkers and other professionals who supervise families. It is fed by a system. mandatory reporting job of law and sociology professor Dorothy Roberts and others have been shown to do more harm than good to children.

Research shows that there are much more effective ways to protect children and families. Providing monthly stipends to needy families not only reduces the direct effects of poverty that can trigger investigations, but also improves other outcomes. Baby’s First Years The study found that giving parents $333 a month led to improved brain activity in babies that protected later brain development and also allowed mothers to spend more time with their children.

Since poverty is a leading cause of child welfare investigations and removals, reducing child poverty should also reduce these interventions. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine published recommendations in its report that include various types of financial aid”Roadmap to Reduce Child Poverty.” If implemented, these can lead to: 1.2 million less Every year investigations increase, and investigations against Black children decrease by almost 43 percent.

Poverty puts constant pressure on parents who fear eviction; hunger; turning off lights, phone, or heat; or they may lose their income or job if they stay home with a sick child. This situation causes so much stress that poverty becomes one of the negative childhood experiences that heralds bad outcomes for children. Economic stress can also interfere with parent-child bonds, causing long-term deficits in cognition, social skills, and emotional regulation. Strong evidence shows poverty is rising parent stress And risk of child abuse and neglect.

Covid-19 quarantines in New York City demonstrated this effect dramatically. During this time, families received a one-time cash payment of $500 per child, monthly cash assistance of up to $300 per child (via a federal tax credit), and eviction protection. As a result, child poverty has more than halved, child deaths and reports of neglect and abuse have also decreased. fallen dramatically. Increased family income and stability directly improved children’s well-being.

Unfortunately, efforts to renew the tax credits failed in December 2021 amid strong Republican opposition. The existing child tax credit, which former president Donald Trump proposed making permanent, returned to previous levels in January 2022. Because it excludes those with no income and reduces payments to many low-income families (and has a tax benefit of a maximum reduction in 2024), it has caused child poverty to more than double and exceed pre-pandemic levels.

In contrast, Vice President Kamala Harris economic plan He proposes restoring Biden’s pandemic policy of providing direct payments of $300 per child per month to all low-, moderate- and low-income families. Although it is called a tax credit, it is actually income guaranteeIt is paid monthly regardless of whether the family has any taxable income. His plan was to increase the annual payment for parents of newborn babies to $6,000. A tax credit plan like the one Harris proposes is estimated to reduce child poverty by nearly 50 percent and lift 5.6 million children out of poverty. These payments will significantly reduce the known stressors that contribute to child abuse.

Increased family income and stability directly improved children’s well-being.

Although financial support is provided to families, increase government spending in the short term 2024 analysisA $1,000 increase in household income from benefits such as cash transfers or food stamps would create $8,342 in benefits, and a child benefit policy costing $97 billion per year would create $1.5 trillion in social benefits per year. Such policies save lifetime benefits and unemployment benefits, medical expenses, and criminal justice costs. They also increase government revenues from increased earnings and taxes paid by parents and children who later become wage earners or entrepreneurs.

The key to truly protecting children is simple: provide adequate funding to struggling families. In addition to restoring the expanded child tax credit, as Vice President Harris has proposed, we should also redirect monthly payments to foster families (which are $1,300 per child in high-cost-of-living cities such as New York) to support financially struggling biological parents of reported children.

Of course, the small minority of children who experience serious neglect or abuse need not just funding but protection. Child abuse is a crime and should be reported to the police (who are responsible for respecting parents’ constitutional rights), not to protective services agencies that continually ignore parents’ rights.

The key to truly protecting children is simple: provide adequate funding to struggling families.

Proven cases of abuse should then be handled the same way in collaborative family treatment courts, or FTCs, which focus on keeping families safely together. FTCs include judges, career counselors, mental health professionals, and social workers who are trained to provide appropriate assistance to family members by bringing together many different community resources. These services include substance abuse and mental health treatment, housing and financial assistance, parent education, job training and job placement. FTCs more effective It provides more benefits than adversarial family courts in preventing abuse and saves costs.

Rather than paying billions of dollars to harass and separate families, we can better protect poor, neglected, and abused children by providing direct financial support to parents. Unless we first preserve the loving bonds in America’s families—even when they seem unusual or flawed—we cannot create a society that holds itself together rather than tearing itself apart.

Ruth Bettelheim, Ph.D., is a life coach and child, marriage and family psychotherapist. His writings have appeared in The New York Times, Psychology Today, The Huffington Post, USA Today and other publications.

This article was first published on: darkness. Read original article.