To the End of June : The Intimate Life of American Foster Care (9780547999531) (41 page)

6.
[>]
   
“causeth contempt and irreverence”:
Stephen O'Connor
, Orphan Trains: The Story of Charles Loring Brace and the Children He Saved and Failed
(New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001), 10.

7.
[>]
   
indentured servants to richer families:
Local governments removed children via “poor laws” based on a British system of the same name. Jillian Jimenez, “The History of Child Protection in the African American Community: Implications for Current Child Welfare Practices,”
Children and Youth Services Review
28, no. 8 (August 2006): 888–905.

8.
[>]
   
almshouses or even jails:
See Mimi Abramowitz,
Regulating the Lives of Women: Social Welfare Policy from Colonial Times to the Present
(Boston: South End Press, 1988), chapter 5. This was happening particularly in New York, according to O'Connor
, Orphan Trains
, 37.

9.
[>]
   
“quite untaught”:
O'Connor
, Orphan Trains
, 103.

10.
[>]
   
religious example for the world:
For a more thorough discussion of this idea, see chapter 1 in Elizabeth Pleck's
Domestic Tyranny: The Making of American Social Policy Against Family Violence from Colonial Times to the Present
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).

11.
[>]
   
the girl's
foster
mother:
“The Catalyst: 1870–1874,” on the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children website:
http://www.nyspcc.org
.

12.
[>]
   
250 child protection associations nationwide:
Nina Bernstein,
The Lost Children of Wilder: The Epic Struggle to Change Foster Care
(New York: Vintage, 2001), 8.

13.
[>]
   
flogging as punishment:
Pleck,
Domestic Tyranny
, 10.

14.
[>]
   
hitting urban centers at the time:
There had been lurid reports of violent crimes and murders in crime gazettes after 1874. Ibid.
, 79.

15.
[>]
   
control the children of immigrants:
Historian Elizabeth Pleck writes about many reasons for the rise of SPCCs. Because of all of the violence and crime reported in the papers, some people argued for drastic measures to stop the children of immigrants, primarily, from becoming criminals. Most SPCC directors didn't talk about the family directly, or even the prevention of cruelty, really, but rather a kind of faulty moral character that emerged in society too. A wealthy urban elite was fearful of the social disorder and disease and poverty they saw in the cities, and they blamed the immigrant, Catholic, and poor inhabitants. They wanted to stop the kids of these families from becoming thieves and drunks. Ibid.
, 70, 76, 79.

16.
[>]
   
remove a child from an unsafe home:
States reaffirmed an old English law, called
parens patriae
, which establishes the state as the ultimate parent for children. The law had been in use since the mid-nineteenth century, but only in cases of property inheritance. Suddenly it became a firm legal principle justifying a social worker's right to remove a child from an unsafe home—without police and without a warrant. It's still in use today. Jimenez, “The History of Child Protection in the African American Community,” 892.

17.
[>]
   
on the books:
John E. B. Myers, “A Short History of Child Protection in America,”
Family Law Quarterly
42 (2008–9): 456.

18.
[>]
   
more than a million in 1980:
Ibid.

19.
[>]
   
two or three a month:
Don't Turn Back: Reform Has Made New York's Children Safer
, an analysis of trends in New York City child welfare (Alexandria, VA: National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, released January 2006; updated, January 2009).
http://www.nccpr.org/reports/dontturnback.pdf
.

20.
[>]
   
Her murder was nationally publicized:
Elisa Izquierdo was featured on the cover of
Time
magazine; the article was David Van Biema, Sharon Epperson, and Elaine Rivera, “Elisa Izquierdo: Abandoned to Her Fate,”
Time
, December 11, 1995. Her story was also featured on
Dateline
in August 1996.

21.
[>]
   
“removing the child from harm's way”:
The Honorable Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mayor of the City of New York, and Nicholas Scoppetta, Commissioner,
Protecting the Children of New York: A Plan of Action for the Administration for Children's Services
(New York: Administration for Children's Services, December 19, 1996).

22.
[>]
   
ACS removals had increased by 50 percent:
Don't Turn Back: Reform Has Made New York's Children Safer
.

23.
[>]
   
no running water:
These three examples come from Rachel L. Swarns, “In a Policy Shift, More Parents Are Arrested for Child Neglect,”
The New York Times
, Section A, “Metropolitan Desk,” October 25, 1997, 1.

24.
[>]
   
from twenty-four in 1996 to thirty-six in 1998:
Don't Turn Back: Reform Has Made New York's Children Safer
.

25.
[>]
   
monitored by an outside panel of experts:
Marisol v. Giuliani
, Settlement Agreement, United States District Court, Southern District of New York, 95 CV 10533 (RJW), December 1, 1998.
http://www.childrensrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/1998-12-2_ny_marisol_city_settlement.pdf
.

26.
[>]
   
“yank 'em out” philosophy:
Nina Bernstein, “Effort to Fix Child Welfare Draws Praise,”
The New York Times
, December 8, 2000.
http://www.ny times.com/2000/12/08/nyregion/effort-to-fix-child-welfare-draws-praise.html?scp=390&sq=&st=nyt&pagewanted=1
.

27.
[>]
   
case could be determined in family court:
Ibid.

28.
[>]
   
reduce time spent in care:
Ibid.

29.
[>]
   
removals dropped further:
Since the reforms began after the height of Foster Care Panic in 1998, reabuse—or parents reabusing their kids after being given preventive help—also fell 30 percent by 2005.

30.
[>]
   
eight hundred new workers were hired:
Todd Venezia and Tim Perone, “ACS at Fault in 10 Kid Deaths—Probe Bares ‘Tragic' Carelessness, Pattern of ‘Lying' and Covering Up,”
New York Post
, August 10, 2007.

31.
[>]
   
files on neglect rose by 163 percent:
Sewell Chan, “Rise in Child Abuse Reports Has Family Court Reeling,”
The New York Times Abstracts
, The New York Times Company, January 12, 2007.

32.
[>]
   
children die from abuse or neglect every single day:
The advocacy organization Children's Rights claims that four children die per day in the United States from abuse or neglect. Madelyn Freundlich, Sarah Gerstenzang, Pamela Diaz, and Erika London,
Continuing Danger: A Report on Child Fatalities in New York City
(New York: Children's Rights, February 2003).
http://www.childrensrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/continuing_danger_february_2003.pdf
.

33.
[>]
   
convicted of murder in May 2012:
Associated Press, “Mother Guilty of Murder in Death of 4-Year-Old,”
The New York Times
, New York Edition, May 10, 2012.

34.
[>]
   
a kernel of corn in her belly:
Mirela Iverac, “Girl, 4, Had Just a Kernel of Corn in Her Stomach at Time of Death: ME,” WNBC News Blog, May 3, 2012.
http://www.wnyc.org/blogs/wnyc-news-blog/2012/may/03/medical-examiner-take-stand-trial-4-year-olds-death/
.

35.
[>]
   
“evidence of alleged systemic failures” at the agency:
N. R. Kleinfield and Mosi Secret, “A Bleak Life, Cut Short at 4, Harrowing from the Start,”
The
New York Times
, New York Edition, May 9, 2011.

36.
[>]
   
criminally negligent homicide:
When this book went to press, the caseworker and supervisor were awaiting trial.

37.
[>]
   
supporting the families with intensive home-based therapies:
Ronald Richter spoke about this at a forum at the New School in New York City entitled “The Ties That Bind: Reimagining Juvenile Justice and Child Welfare for Teens, Families and Communities,” held on February 2, 2012.

38.
[>]
   
medically fragile children like Marchella:
A Planning Group was formed by ACS and the public advocate in November 2010 following the death of Marchella Pierce. The Planning Group investigated the work of ACS as well as services available to medically fragile children and recommended that $11.7 million for preventive services and $2.6 million for homemaking services be fully recognized and stabilized in future budgets, to provide care for at-risk and medically fragile children. The mayor agreed that these services should be funded. From an ACS press release, “ACS and Public Advocate Bill DeBlasio Release Children's Services Group Report on Death of Marchella Pierce,” March 31, 2011. Retrieved from the ACS website:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/acs/html/home/home.shtml
.

39.
[>]
   
law later that summer:
Governor Cuomo signed a bill on August 20, 2012, that would make assaulting a social worker a felony—affording caseworkers the same protection as transit workers and hotel employees. David Sims, “Cuomo Enacts Bill to Give Social-Service Assaults Felony Status,”
The Chief Leader
, August 27, 2012.
http://thechiefleader.com/news/news_of_the_week/cuomo-enacts-bill-to-give-social-service-assaults-felony-status/article_38215e34-f04f-11e1-91e6-0019bb30f31a.html
.

40.
[>]
   
He blamed the death on ignorance and dysfunction:
See Associated Press, “Mother Guilty of Murder in Death of 4-Year-Old”; Orin Yaniv and Rich Schapiro, “Mother Found Guilty in Marchella Pierce's Death,”
New York Daily News
, May 9, 2012,
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/prosecutor-describes-brooklyn-mom-trial-4-year-old-starvation-death-heartless-article-1.1075182;
Jose Martinez, “Jury Finds ‘Monster' Mom Guilty in Daughter's Starving Death,”
New York Post
, May 9, 2012,
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/make_monster_mom_pay_for_daughter_BssjFrOlIF84vkWzFGRuTJ;
and Mirela Iverac, “Mom Found Guilty in Daughter's Death,” WNYC News Blog, May 9, 2012,
http://www.wnyc.org/blogs/wnyc-news-blog/2012/may/09/summations-begin-trial-mom-accused-murdering-toddler/
.

41.
[>]
   
and 10 percent sexual abuse:
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Administration on Children, Youth and Families, Children's Bureau, “Child Maltreatment 2010.”
http://archive.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/pubx/cm10/cm10.pdf
.

42.
[>]
   
leave the baby with an older sibling:
The National Coalition for Child Protection Reform (NCCPR) is a good example of an organization that advocates for fewer removals and family preservation, in part because far too many investigations and removals are based on family poverty. See the NCCPR issue paper 5, “Who Is in ‘The System' and Why” at the NCCPR website:
http://www.nccpr.org/reports/05SYSTEM.pdf
.

43.
[>]
   
children do better with their (even marginal) birth parents than with foster parents:
The most reliable data on this comes from Joseph Doyle at MIT, who used the removal tendency of investigators as an instrumental variable to identify causal effects of foster care placement on a range of outcomes for school-age children and youth. Doyle looked at roughly sixty-five thousand children between the ages of five and fifteen in the state of Illinois whose families had been investigated for abuse. All of these children were right on the margins of being removed—and a rotational assignment process effectively randomized their families to their investigators. Doyle's results suggest that children assigned to investigators with higher removal rates are more likely to be placed in foster care, and they have higher delinquency rates, teen birth rates, and lower earnings. Large marginal treatment effect estimates suggest caution in the interpretation, but the results suggest that children on the margin of placement tend to have better outcomes when they remain at home, especially older children. Joseph J. Doyle, PhD, “Child Protection and Child Outcomes: Measuring the Effects of Foster Care,”
American Economic Review
97, no. 5 (December 2007): 1583–1610.

44.
[>]
   
This is called a “secure attachment”:
This is an oversimplified description of an enormous and dynamic theory. When young children's attachment is disrupted, for example, they develop what's known as “avoidant attachment,” “resistant attachment,” or “disorganized attachment.” For a good article on various attachment responses to foster care placement see Mary Dozier, Deane Dozier, and Melissa Manni, “Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-Up: The ABC's of Helping Infants in Foster Care Cope with Early Adversity,”
Zero to Three
22, no. 5 (April/May 2002): 7–13.

45.
[>]
   
scientific papers on foster care's child-parent dynamics:
Attachment theory is referenced in the abstracts of nearly a thousand articles retrieved in the Social Science Citation database of the Institute for Scientific Analysis since 1996, and 1,600 times in the American Psychological Association's PsycInfo database since 1998, according to Richard P. Barth, Thomas M. Crea, Karen John, June Thoburn, and David Quinton, “Beyond Attachment Theory and Therapy: Towards Sensitive and Evidence-Based Interventions with Foster and Adoptive Families in Distress,”
Child and Family Social Work
10, no. 4 (2005): 257–68.