Today, a committee came to a sobering discovery. The children in the area had been suffering from malpractice and abuse in the child welfare system.
This all started at Philadelphia’s Department of Human Services.
The agency itself has been long responsible for ensuring the safety of children away from abuse. But because Human Service has long neglected it’s responsibilities, in of itself has the agency been losing it’s urgency by failing the future of tomorrow!
To make matters worse, the agency is responsible for separating families without cause, punishment towards moms who they themselves are responsible for abuse and upholding systematic racism.
For shame!
The Special Committee on Child Separations is ran by Councilmembers Cindy Bass and David Oh. And in a report, they blow the lid off this thing.
“There are just too many ways for children to be placed into the system for investigation. No procedures currently exist to protect the rights of the families who are under investigation by DHS. Little transparency exists in the interactions between DHS and the Family Court.”
But wait! There’s more!
In one case from the Special Committee on Child Separations, there were four parents and a grandparent being mishandled and unusually separated from their kids. This being because of retaliation as well as false testimony. Of course, this is done by careless caseworkers towards parents and children. Unfortunately they were being denied their due process and therefore, the opportunity to testify against the claims made versus them.
Who are we to judge? Concerned parents and others’ children, that’s who.
As it was, the committee decidedly determined the city’s department of human services pulls too many kids into care. Thereby, child welfare stretched themselves thin and had to compromise its core values by handling the quantity of lives versus the quality of lives.
According to the report, “The tragedies that make headlines are as rare as they are horrific. They are needles in a haystack. You can’t find the needles by constantly making the haystack bigger.”
Should Philadelphia’s Human Services become better at discerning which of the many potential cases they take on, it’s reportedly an opportunity for those caseworkers to “find those few children in real danger.”
Since June 2017, Philly has shrunk the city foster rolls down by 29%, give-or-take. That comes from the Department of Human Services. Such “success,” if you can call it that, is small potatoes compared to calls for 50% reduction, minimum. This is a statistic that even involves the prestige of the Casey Family Programs, which are the largest operating foundation, driven on improving foster care and child welfare.
Of course, the City Of Brotherly Love removes youth from impoverished homes at two times the efficiency of other major cities like NYC and Chicago as well.
The finding in the report is overseen Friday by Council member Oh. A rally is scheduled to happen after the press conference at Love Park.
