Years ago when I was running the Yonkers New York Department of Social Services, I started getting complaints about men showing up at peoples’ homes with guns and removing their children. I had to persuade an upset community that they weren’t our caseworkers!
These men had somehow reactivated a long-unused Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children license, probably from the 1880’s when there were no public child protection agencies.
The state legislature quickly terminated that license.
Today some activists favor turning over child welfare to communities. How would that work? Would Yonkers-style vigilantes pop up? Would Neighborhood Watch programs remove children from their homes? Would the nice neighbors who started taking in kids actually be sex trafficking them?
Child welfare unquestionably needs reforms. But not abolition. Life-altering decisions about families must be made by legally accountable public agencies.
– Rich Gehrman
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