pumping the blood around. But they're basically dead inside. It's been
killed. Either they had to kill it to survive physically, or somebody
else killed it in them. Whatever it is that makes people human.''
Wexler estimates that approximately half of the homeless in New York
City came from the foster-care system. Most of them had parents who
loved them. An 11-year-old boy, who was fortunate enough to be
returned to his mother, told a congressional committee, ``They took
almost five years away from my life. That's almost one-half of my
whole life that I spent just waiting to come back to my real family.
It was terrible to be put in lots of different homes with lots of
strangers, knowing they wouldn't let me be with my mother. I wanted to
be with my mother and my brothers and sister. One time I ran away from
a foster home and back to my mom, but the social worker wouldn't let
me stay. . . . The only help I wanted from the social workers was to
go back to my mom, but they didn't help us with that. The foster-care
people are trying to tell my mother that she's not -- that she's not
good enough right now? She's good enough for me any time.''
The system doesn't even have a strong record of saving children from
serious physical abuse. Its poor performance is due to two factors.
First, the rate of abuse in the foster-care system is much greater
than the national average; foster parents do not have to go through a
screening process, and many are in it purely for financial gain.
Second, many children who have been physically abused are returned by
the child-welfare bureaucracy to the abuser, if he or she
``cooperates'' and says the right things in therapy. (It is estimated
that 35 to 55 per cent of all child-abuse deaths involve children
previously known to child-protective services.)
In addition to the bureaucratic imperative underlying the present
system, there are economic factors. The Federal Government provides
massive reimbursement for foster-care programs nationwide, but little
money is available for preventive services. In New York City, Wexler
noted, the city contracts for preventive services with some of the
same agencies that live off foster care. The result is that virtually
nothing is done to provide families with the kinds of services that
they want, such as rent subsidies, day care, etc., though money is
always available for the one service that does not necessarily help to
keep the family together, i.e., ``therapy. '' Wexler notes, ``These
agencies prefer placing children in foster care -- and keeping them
there -- because they are paid for foster care on a per diem basis. As
soon as they do what they're supposed to do -- reunite families --
their money stops'' (New York Daily News, July 17, 1991).
Reverse, March!
WHAT, THEN, can be done to protect the welfare of children? In the
case of the inner cities, which account for the overwhelming majority
of children placed in foster care, I think the answer is to be found
in Alan Keyes' s proposal -- made in these pages last year, after the
Los Angeles riot -- to devolve the functions currently usurped by
federal, state, and local bureaucracies onto decision-making councils
elected by the residents of each neighborhood.
Keyes wrote, ``The federal and state governments should work with the
councils to transfer the administration of social-welfare programs
into the hands of persons chosen by and answering to the councils.''
The child-welfare system and the family-court system should be
abolished.
Instead, the neighborhood committees should investigate charges of
neglect, and if the ``neglect'' is merely due to poverty the councils
should allocate financial resources derived from the federal and state
governments to help alleviate the problems. If the parents are truly
negligent, the council should work with foster-care agencies to find
temporary placements for the children and/or with family therapists to
provide counseling for the family, with the goal of eventual
reunification.
In the case of physical and sexual abuse, there should be criminal
prosecution of the accused. Under the guise of providing ``therapy,''
social workers and mental-health personnel have prevented criminals
from receiving just punishment for their crimes, at the same time as
they remove children from good and loving parents. Child-welfare
workers have repeatedly returned children to parents who have
seriously abused them, leading to many needless deaths. This would not
happen if abusers were regarded as criminals rather than as ``mentally
ill'' individuals who can be cured by several months of talking (i.e.,
``therapy''). The neighborhood councils should help find appropriate
placements for the children of abusers.
The objective of the judicial process should not be to determine
whether an individual suffers from a ``mental disorder,'' but whether
he or she has actually been guilty of an act of physical or sexual
abuse. This would allow for the restoration of the constitutional
right to be considered innocent until proven guilty. Therapists who
have worked with families should be allowed to testify as character
witnesses, but not as expert witnesses.
Professional ``expertise'' is a poor substitute for common sense and
common decency.
The above measures would save the taxpayers millions of dollars and
significantly improve the lives of children and poor people -- as well
as the equally aggrieved, but less numerous, middle-class victims of
the child-welfare system. There is one major problem: these measures
would put thousands, if not millions, of social workers, mental-health
professionals, child caseworkers, administrators, and family-court
personnel out of work. As Robert Woodson astutely observed (``Saving
the Poor from Their Saviors,'' National Center for Neighborhood
Enterprises, Washington, D.C.): ``What we have built is a Poverty
Pentagon, the principal beneficiaries of which are not the poor but
those who make their livings from the poor.'' The dismantling of the
dependency-producing welfare state is a problem comparable in nature
and in magnitude to the task of demilitarization presented by the end
of the Cold War.
I can think of no easy way of making this transition. It would require
a massive economic and social reorganization, as well as a political
battle against an entrenched bureaucracy. But it is evident that we
will suffer enormous costs as a nation if the magnitude of the problem
prevents us from confronting it. A society that destroys its children
is not a morally or spiritually viable entity.
By SETH FARBER Dr. Farber is a psychologist and the author of Madness,
Heresy, and the Rumor of Angels, due out later this spring from Open
Court Press
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