CHILD NEGLECT IN LAW:
Parents unable to buy food for their child because of poverty are different from caregivers leaving their babies without food or care by absence, or because they are incapacitated by substance abuse or are the kind of parents who spend all their food money on drugs.
This parental distinction is also true for caregivers unable to bring their babies and toddlers in for medical appointments or court appearances. The difference between parents that would if they could and those that simply are too dysfunctional because of severe mental health or substance abuse issues are stark.
Because of this distinction, mandated reporter are required to find and make these necessary resources available to caregivers so that the child has food and gets medical attention when needed. We do this because we want to keep families together.
This sounds like good public policy, but in practice,
there are several reasons this program
is failing to keep children healthy or safe.
1). While there is very little reporting or transparency of critical child metrics throughout CPS, the data that is available shows that 20–40% of referred families either formally declining services or never respond sufficiently to be enrolled. Another study showed a significant minority” of families offered voluntary services in family‑assessment tracks either refused or dropped out early, with reported non‑engagement/decline rates in the 20–35% range in some jurisdictions. The dropped out early is something that happens often but doesn’t show up anywhere in this reporters searching. Please provide information if you have it (info@invisiblechildren.org with DATA in the subject line).
The Family Assessment Model was supposed to make it possible for parents to find the food, transportation, and other resources they need to keep their children and family together and keep children safe and healthy.
In practice, tens of thousands of children are kept in CPS limbo while parents can ignore the threat of a child abuse investigation without any consequence by refusing services, not participating fully with those services, or signing up and dropping out. The damage done to these children is multiplied by the months and years they remain NEGLECTED in toxic homes not being seen or helped by Child Protective Services (listen to a judge speak those words at the end of this six minute video)
2). Because childhood trauma is by definition, a mental health issue, mental health services are critical in most child abuse cases. At the same time, access to adequate mental health services is unlikely in almost all states.
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Research consistently finds that 50–80% of children in foster care meet criteria for at least one mental health disorder, compared with roughly 18–22% in the general child population.
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In a national CPS sample (NSCAW), only about one‑third if children investigated by child welfare received any mental health service, let alone adequate mental health service despite nearly one‑quarter having a measured mental health problem and many others showing serious behavioral challenges. Arguably, more than half of services received are too short term, too heavily relying on poorly supervised psychotropic medications. This does not include the problem poor families without transportation face with office visits and other problems.
10 million children in the United States are living in households below the official federal poverty line today, which is about 13–14% of all U.S. children.
7.8 million children are reported to CPS annually and arguably, about that same number are not reported as child abuse is invisible.
The lack of performance metrics in this space is troubling and it is difficult to understand who benefits by keeping it from the public (certainly not the children in need of safety and services)
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