Child Welfare System Reform
For as long as the child protection system has existed, advocates have been pressing for its reform. The fundamental dilemma has always been how to ensure children’s rights to safety and protection from the harms of abuse and neglect without unfairly or inappropriately violating families’ rights to raise their children without social or governmental interference.
As a result, we have experienced a multi-decade “swinging pendulum” of child welfare reform initiatives. Family advocates focus on building systems that strengthen and preserve families and support parents’ rights, until there are sufficient harms or child deaths from maltreatment to warrant a legal and community refocus on child safety reform. Eventually, a renewed allegation of punitive system “intrusiveness” into the lives of families pushes the dialogue back to reinforcing parents’ rights. Rarely does society seem to understand that equal attention to both protecting children and strengthening families is the only way to be truly effective – a “both-and” rather than an “either-or” solution.
The resources in this section explore the philosophical, ideological, and practical dilemmas and challenges that typically drive child welfare reform strategies. We hope a deeper and rational exploration of the inherent issues and dilemmas will help us implement continuums of community service entities that can strengthen families to prevent child maltreatment whenever possible, and that can also ensure safety and permanence for the most vulnerable of maltreated children when we must.
