Shattered Bonds by Dorothy Roberts

Author:Dorothy Roberts
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Civitas Books
Published: 2011-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

4. WELFARE REFORM:

ENDING AID TO POOR CHILDREN

THE PASSAGE OF THE FEDERAL ADOPTION LAW corresponded with the growing disparagement of mothers receiving public assistance and welfare reform’s retraction of the federal safety net for poor children. In the public’s mind, these undeserving mothers—just like the unfit mothers in the child welfare system—are Black. The rejection of public aid to poor families in favor of private solutions to poverty—low-wage work, marriage, and child support— mirrored the appeal to adoption to fix the public foster care system. This intersection of welfare and adoption reform is only the latest chapter in a long history of intimately related policies addressing children’s poverty. Public assistance to poor families and programs dealing with neglected children are two sides of the same coin. Yet Americans’ compassion toward poor children has always existed in tension with the impulse to blame their parents. The reason that child welfare’s problems seem so intractable, writes Nina Bernstein in her book about reforming foster care, lies in “the unacknowledged contradictions between policies that punish the ‘undeserving poor’ and pledges to help all needy children.”242 Racism has consistently led to a resolution of this tension that refuses adequate social support for families and hurts Black families the most.

The Adoption and Safe Families Act was passed on the heels of the overhaul of federal welfare policy. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 ended the federal guarantee of cash assistance to America’s children and allowed states to implement extensive welfare reform programs. The federal entitlement program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), was replaced by Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), which provides benefits for a limited time while recipients look for work. The overlap of these two laws marked the first time in U.S. history that “states have a federal mandate to protect children from abuse and neglect but no corresponding mandate to provide basic economic support to poor families.”243 Welfare-to-work programs have helped some poor mothers find jobs and improve their ability to support their children. But state welfare reform measures hinder the ability of many others to care for their children: they reduce cash assistance to families, eliminate payments to some families altogether, and require mothers, often without adequate child care, to work and participate in job training, counseling, and other programs.244

What will happen to the children of mothers who fail to meet new work rules because of child care or transportation problems, who are unable to find work within the two-year time limit, or who leave their children at home without adequate care while they participate in required work programs? It is likely that some of them will be removed from their mother’s custody and placed in foster care. “Whatever its limitation, the AFDC program complemented the child welfare services system,” writes social work professor Mark Courtney. “It provided a base of financial support to poor families regardless of whether parents chose or were able to work.”245 With that base kicked out from under families, the child welfare system is bound to catch some of the falling children.

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