ARE WHITE LIBERALS DOING THIS TO BLACK PEOPLE? From [HERE] and [HERE] Child welfare systems in the United States too often treat poverty as the basis for charges of neglect and decisions to remove children from their parents, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said in a report released today. The system’s disproportionate impact on Black and Indigenous families and people living in poverty, and the sheer number of children removed unjustly, make this a national crisis warranting immediate attention and action.

The 146-page report, “‘If I Wasn’t Poor, I Wouldn’t Be Unfit’: The Family Separation Crisis in the US Child Welfare System,” documents how conditions of poverty, such as a family’s struggle to pay rent or maintain housing, are misconstrued as neglect, and interpreted as evidence of an inability and lack of fitness to parent. Human Rights Watch and the ACLU found significant racial and socioeconomic disparities in child welfare involvement. Black children are almost twice as likely to experience investigations as white children and more likely to be separated from their families.

“The child welfare system punishes parents for poverty by taking their children away,” said Hina Naveed, Aryeh Neier fellow at Human Rights Watch and the ACLU and the author of the report. “Parents need resources to help provide for their families, but what they are getting is surveillance, regulation, and punishment.”

Human Rights Watch and the ACLU analyzed national and state data on income and poverty levels, child maltreatment, and the foster system, and interviewed 138 people, including affected parents and caregivers, attorneys, government workers, local, state, and national advocates, and others.

One in three children in the US will be part of a child welfare investigation by age 18. Nearly eight million children were referred to a child maltreatment hotline in 2019, with investigations resulting for three million of them. More than 80 percent were found not to have faced abuse or neglect.

One woman told us her son injured himself when he slipped on water while dancing in the kitchen. “I rushed him to the emergency room when he got hurt. The doctors asked me questions, and I told them everything.” She was shocked to learn they reported her to child protective services for suspected abuse, triggering a cascade of interventions that she said deeply harmed her children and damaged their relationship.

Human Rights Watch and the ACLU found that nearly 75 percent of child maltreatment cases nationwide in 2019 involved “neglect” as defined by the system.

A 52-year-old mother from Oklahoma said the condition of her small mobile home was a factor in a child welfare investigation that caused her to lose custody of her 8-year-old son. “They said [one reason] was because we had no running water, but I had like 12 gallons in my camper,” she said. “We were looking for a [larger] place to rent and hadn’t found one yet.”

Counties with higher poverty rates have higher rates of maltreatment investigations. But investigation rates are high for Black families even in counties with low rates of poverty.

Black and Indigenous families are disproportionately affected. Black children make up just 13 percent of the US child population but 24 percent of child abuse or neglect reports and 21 percent of children entering the foster system. White children make up 50 percent of the US child population, and 46 percent of the children in abuse or neglect. [MORE]