This week Dr. Lisa Hollensteiner, Safe Passage’s Board Chair, sent a letter to the editor that was published in the Star Tribune:
In “Child protection: When tragedy is used to justify more harm” (Strib Voices, Aug. 7), Amelia Franck Meyer states that children placed in foster care suffer more Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) than other children, with long-term consequences. What she fails to acknowledge is that the very study she cited for this claim noted that it would be inaccurate to attribute these outcomes to foster care alone. These are children who experienced significant abuse and trauma before being removed from their homes — events that also cause emotional harm with long-term effects. Children should be with family when it is safe, but when they are severely endangered, they need to be removed, at least temporarily, to limit further abuse, further ACEs and more lifelong consequences. Child safety is the priority.
Meyer also notes her concern about children being removed from homes merely for neglect. Neglect is defined by statute as parents failing to meet their child’s needs “when reasonably able to do so,” which precludes a child being removed from a family only because of poverty. In the most recent Minnesota Child Welfare Report, 71% of child deaths were attributed to neglect, so it is clear it can be a life-threatening danger.
Dr. Hollensteiner’s words remind us that leaving a child in an abusive home can be far more traumatic than removing them from the home — and that neglect can be every bit as deadly as abuse.
Thank you for adding this important information to try to correct for the errors in the original op-ed. The idea that child welfare was developed to oppress black parents or, even, that there is a fundamental racism that operates to separate black children from their families regardless of their risk is patently. Read any history, aside from Dorothy Roberts version, and the longstanding efforts to bring equitable care to Black children and parents can be readily observed. At the current time, the evidence is quite clear that Black children experience fewer separations than would be expected given their risks and 3Xs higher child maltreatment rate and mortality rate from abuse. We have a lot to do to make child welfare better for parents and children–promulgating myths is not one of those.