Iimagine a a stranger knocks on the door and threatens to take your children away if you don’t let them search your house for evidence that your children are unsafe. Traumatic scenarios like this are inflicted on some 3.5 million children in the United States each year by child protective services, as ProPublica and NBC News report in a 2022 report. investigation. More than 37 percent Children in the United States are estimated to experience such research during their childhood, according to a 2017 study, including 53% of African American children.

Contrary to what these statistics suggest, abuse is not endemic in American families. Only about 5 percent of CPS investigations result in physical or sexual abuse. In fact, the vast majority of reports that triggered these searches were not related to alleged abuse at all but stemmed from alleged neglect. This is a broad category including lack of healthy food, clothing, hygiene, shelter, supervision or medical care – in other words, the impact of poverty.

Indeed, a 2022 Report by the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch found that “circumstances related to poverty, including housing instability and insufficient resources, have been used as evidence of parental unfitness – either to substantiate allegations of neglect, either to justify family separation or termination of parental rights. »

Punishing poverty and confusing it with abuse or neglect has serious consequences. Parents and children are traumatized when children are removed and foster care may permanent damage children’s ability to trust, form prosocial bonds, and believe that society is there to help rather than harm.

These heartbreaking separations are all too common: a child is removed from their home and placed in foster care on average every three minutes, representing nearly 200,000 new foster care placements in 2022. Even surveys initials (to which many more families are subject), can leave indelible scars, because parents and children then live in fear of being arbitrarily torn apart. An unexpected knock at the door can be terrifying.

The vast majority of reports that triggered these searches were not related to alleged abuse at all but stemmed from alleged neglect.

This human cost is accompanied by a very high financial bill. In 2020, the United States spent more than $31.4 billion support a child welfare system that, despite its name and good intentions, often causes irreparable harm to children and families. Less than a quarter of this amount directly supports foster children. The rest funds investigators, social workers and other professionals who monitor families. It is powered by a system of mandatory declaration that the work of the professor of law and sociology Dorothy Roberts and others have been shown to harm more children than they help.

Research shows that there are much more effective ways to protect children and families. Providing a monthly stipend to families in need not only reduces the direct effects of poverty that can trigger investigations, but also improves other outcomes. THE Baby’s first years One study found that giving parents $333 a month led to improved brain activity in infants in a way that could protect later brain development, and would also allow mothers to spend more time with their children.

Since poverty is the leading cause of child welfare investigations and referrals, reducing child poverty should also reduce these interventions. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine issued recommendations in their report that included various forms of financial assistance.A roadmap to reduce child poverty“If implemented, these measures could lead to up to 1.2 million less investigations per year and reduce investigations of black children by nearly 43 percent.

Poverty puts parents under constant pressure, as they fear eviction; hunger; turn off the lights, telephone or heating; or lose their income or job if they stay home with a sick child. It causes so much stress that poverty is one of the negative childhood experiences that predicts poor outcomes for children. Economic stress can also interfere with parent-child bonding, causing long-term deficits in cognition, social skills, and emotion regulation. Strong evidence shows poverty is increasing parental stress and the risk of child abuse and neglect.

The Covid-19 lockdowns in New York dramatically demonstrated this effect. During this period, families received a one-time cash payment of $500 per child, a monthly cash grant of up to $300 per child (via a federal tax credit), and protection from eviction. As a result, child poverty has been cut by more than half, and child deaths and cases of neglect and abuse have been reduced. fell dramatically. Increased family income and stability directly increased children’s well-being.

Unfortunately, efforts to renew the tax credits failed in December 2021, in the face of strong Republican opposition. The current child tax credit, which former President Donald Trump proposed making permanent, returned to its old levels in January 2022. Because it excludes people with no income and reduces payments to many low-income families income (and provides a maximum tax benefit of $2,000). reduction in 2024), this has caused child poverty to more than double, surpassing pre-pandemic levels.

In contrast, Vice President Kamala Harris economic plan proposes restoring Biden’s pandemic policy of providing a monthly payment of $300 per child directly to all low-, middle-, and no-income families. Although it is called a tax credit, it is actually income guaranteepaid monthly, whether or not the family earned taxable income. His plan would increase the annual payment to $6,000 for parents of newborns. It is estimated that a tax credit plan like the one proposed by Harris would reduce child poverty by nearly 50 percent and lift 5.6 million children out of poverty. These payments are expected to significantly reduce known stressors that contribute to child maltreatment.

Increased family income and stability directly increased children’s well-being.

Even if financial support for families can increase public spending in the short term, according to Analysis 2024a $1,000 increase in household income from cash transfers or benefits such as food stamps creates $8,342 in welfare benefits, and a child benefit policy that costs $97 billion a year would generate social benefits of 1,500 billion dollars per year. Over a lifetime, such policies save on welfare and unemployment benefits, medical expenses, and criminal justice costs. They also increase public revenues thanks to the increase in income and taxes paid by parents, then by children who then become employees or entrepreneurs.

The key to truly protecting children is simple: providing struggling families with adequate funds. In addition to restoring the expanded child tax credit, as Vice President Harris has proposed, we should also redirect monthly payments to foster parents (which are approximately $1,300 per child in cities with a high cost of living like New York) to support the biological parents of children reported in financial difficulty.

Of course, the small minority of children who suffer from serious neglect or abuse need protection, not just funding. Child abuse is a crime and should be reported to the police (who are required to respect parents’ constitutional rights), rather than to protective service agencies that routinely trample parents’ rights.

The key to truly protecting children is simple: providing struggling families with adequate funds.

Proven cases of abuse should then be handled uniformly by collaborative family treatment courts, or FTCs, which focus on keeping families together safely. FTCs include judges, career counselors, mental health professionals, and social workers trained to provide family members with appropriate assistance by bringing together many different community resources. These services include substance abuse and mental health treatment, housing and financial assistance, parent education, job training and job placement. The FTCs are more efficient than adversarial family courts to prevent abuse, and they save money.

Instead of paying billions to harass and separate families, we can better protect poor, neglected and abused children through direct financial support to parents. We cannot create a society that holds itself together instead of tearing itself apart, unless and until we first protect the bonds of love – even those that seem unfamiliar or imperfect – in American families.

Ruth Bettelheim, Ph.D., is a life coach and child, marriage and family psychotherapist whose writing has appeared in The New York Times, Psychology Today, The Huffington Post, USA Today and other publications.

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