Social work and little one safety companies stay inextricably linked. Faculties of social work proceed to carve out curriculum to organize future practitioners, who will finally take away youngsters from their properties for unspecified time frames. That is framed as not solely vital, however virtuous. Personally, I taught coursework on household violence for years, strolling college students by way of my state’s jurisdictional legal guidelines relating to abuse and neglect, and what legally constitutes the separation of youngsters from properties.
As an educator, I submit that Alan Dettlaff’s new e book, Confronting the Racist Legacy of the American Youngster Welfare System: The Case for Abolition, needs to be required studying. It provides to the rising physique of literature concerning the occupation of social work and its historical past of harmful benevolence. The e book is concise and important.
One of many premises of the e book is how social staff establish and have interaction in social change, however don’t apply those self same critiques and actions to the occupation itself. For instance, through the Trump administration, the U.S. authorities notoriously and publicly used the risk and observe of separating households to discourage immigration on the Southern U.S. border, with youngsters basically disappearing into the bigger U.S. inhabitants. After all, that is harmful and unlawful. Trump says he’ll do this again as a type of deterrence. And for the document, the present administration has continued some of the same border policies as its predecessor.
Any social employee needs to be outraged and dealing to struggle in opposition to this sanctioned violence. But, little one welfare methods, through which social staff routinely interact, separate 200,000 youngsters from their properties yearly. The writer notes this statistic disproportionately impacts Black households. Dettlaff successfully describes how the historical past of chattel slavery pertains to this observe; the writer offers a researched overview of how we got here to have the system of household separations that we now help throughout the nation. It is a thorough and clear overview.
Confronting the Racist Legacy of the American Youngster Welfare System focuses not solely on the historical past of violence dedicated in opposition to households, but in addition how, regardless of claims of reform, the system because it capabilities has at all times operated as supposed. That is rooted within the pervasive nature of white supremacy, which welcomes notions of “reform” which might be pre-determined to fail.
I tremendously appreciated Dettlaff’s dialogue on abolition. The usage of the time period “dismantling” when describing the elimination of oppressive methods is so frequent, it dangers obscuring or lacking the bigger intent of abolition. The ultimate passage of the textual content focuses on this necessary shift in focus. For these readers asking, “Nicely, the place are the alternate options?” I like to recommend not skipping this closing part.
It bears repeating that this work could also be controversial, notably for social staff who work in little one welfare and safety. It shouldn’t be. No space of our collective social work id ought to stand with out critique. The observe of kid welfare has been embraced as important, below the guise of benevolence, and supported by authorities our bodies searching for to codify continued violence.
Put one other manner: if we’re actually outraged by the current enactment of abusive legal guidelines in Texas and elsewhere, where “child abuse” is redefined to include children seeking gender-affirming care, then we should always dig deep to actually defend the weak individuals we declare to assist.
Reviewed by Stephen Cummings, MSW, ACSW, LISW, a medical affiliate professor with greater than 20 years of observe in social service fields, together with 10 years as a licensed social employee in a Trauma I degree hospital setting. His areas of curiosity embody moral use of know-how in social work observe, medical supervision, and getting ready college students for the social work licensure examination.
