Throughout the years that I have spoken about the role of interest development in the lives of children, all children, including those living in foster care, I have found that, probably most people working in the child welfare system have concluded that foster children's pursuit of interests is meant to address problems.  These same people would never conceptualize their own children's involvement in science, history, or the arts, for example, as some sort of therapy.  But, I think that the ever pervasive and long established approach to relating to the families who become involved with child welfare extends to almost every aspect of their lives in the eyes of child welfare personnel.  So almost everything is some kind of treatment.  Not something vital for normal development.

I have also found that people who have not worked within the child welfare system almost always understand quite readily why children living in foster care, just like all other children, need opportunities to explore, develop and pursue their interests.

I believe that if child welfare personnel can participate in thoughtful discussion with others who already understand these issues over a significant period of time, we will see a change in their thinking.  Some of what they had better become familiar with is this:

The pursuit of interests does not derive from an inherent or biological based desire.  Children raised in western societies become aware that cultural patterns and accepted standards call for them to seek out and involve themselves in at least one area of interest out of a possible multitude of fields.  This involvement is what they then use to conceptualize their lives as having purpose, direction and meaning.  This is not some lofty concept nor is it the actual way children may think about this issue.  Thoughts of fulfillment, satisfaction, and happiness may be closer to a young child's interpretation.  In some non western societies, where food is scarce and not bought at supermarkets, proficient foraging for sustenance, for example, may fulfill this same function.  American children deprived of any opportunity to explore and pursue interests will probably interpret this to mean that they fall short of the standard.  As this pattern extends over the course of many years and influences additional life tasks, the risk increases for ongoing adjustment difficulties.

The provision of interest development opportunities "is partly an ethical issue," prominent Harvard developmental psychologist Jerome Kagan told me a few years back.  "Puritans did not approve of children pursuing their own interests, nor did many other cultures.  Our society in 2010 is in a unique historical era.  All children must attend school, some children for diverse reasons are having difficulty with school and so it is a good idea at this time in this culture to let some pursue the areas in which they are talented or have interest," says Kagan.







  

 

Soon after I began working as a caseworker at the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services in 1981, it was announced that my team  would be relocating from Chicago's North Side to the city's West Side.  Because such a move would have seriously interfered with my driving my two young children to and from pre-school and daycare, I switched places with someone from another North Side team.   I was now on a team supervised by Jane Archer.

Jane was a smart, honest, and outspoken one-of-a kind supervisor.  The daughter of a Milwaukee newspaper man, she taught school before becoming a social worker and exuded the determined truth-seeking qualities of a reporter with the intense passion of a true old-fashioned social worker.  Jane supervised a team of seven caseworkers at a time when the average caseload was between 80 and 100.  During regularly scheduled meetings held with each worker, she would reference notes she had written on small index cards, at least one for every single family.  She would have recalled much even without the cards.  Never one to spew forth trite clichés or to settle for simplistic explanations, Jane would adamantly help guide one's thinking in the direction supported by the evidence.

Jane was known for the fierce support she gave her workers.  And that was no easy task given the often mindless bureaucrats she was up against.  But she was principled and a fighter who never tired of speaking out about what she believed was right, right for her workers and right for the families they worked with.  Jane was certainly not motivated by the fear of making an error or protecting her job.  Indeed, her honest efforts saw to it that she was never promoted.

Yet, many considered Jane to have been the best supervisor in the whole Illinois child welfare system.  It was said that the best workers, supervisors and administrators had at one time been on Jane Archer's team.  Even years after she retired, the IDCFS executive deputy director spoke about bringing her back to teach others how to work with families and how to guide those  who did.  What a missed opportunity that it never materialized.

Jane never had an agenda but rather understood the purpose of the child welfare system and then within that conceptual scaffolding used critical thinking to look at evidence and to proceed from there.  

You can only imagine how most of the team felt when in 1988, Jane told everyone that she was about to retire.  We planned a party for her and I was asked to write something to be engraved on a plaque for her.  I received a note from Jane after the party in which she wrote that she "was sorry that I haven't been able to do more about giving [the team] better conditions.  I'm a little pessimistic but we must keep trying."

Jane and I remained in contact, speaking frequently via the phone after I moved to New York City.  In June 2010, I went to Chicago for a few days to see her.  We visited the Chicago Botanic Garden together and, though she was more quiet than in the past, we spoke about child welfare.  Our phone conversations continued when I returned to New York,  but in November of that year Jane passed away at age 83.  I miss Jane.  I miss her very much.

 

  

 

The kind of change we are accustomed to  hearing about has usually involved procedural modifications, with their many merry-go-round variations, not much different than the fashion industry’s  expected rollout each season of the latest hip style. 
While we will discuss necessary changes to the current system—changes
that will really help families have better lives---we need to consider what can
be done so that the families who become the recipients of the child welfare
system do not get there in the first place. It would be a mistake to
complacently accept that the endurance of the child welfare system, certainly in
its over-reaching size and scope, is a mainstay without other alternatives.
 Something I want to address in more detail later, but must briefly mention here, is that many, many parents who have become forcibly involved with the child welfare system have in reality not maltreated their children, something that a closer, more patient and insightful  examination would usually confirm.  

There are many reasons why these families, usually from impoverished backgrounds, become embroiled in this sad maze.  But perhaps it is an element of hopelessness that so many of these families experience that not only contributes  to behaviors that can easily be interpreted to constitute some form of  maltreatment but can also leave them believing that they are powerless and  without the means  to oppose the  system’s mandated intrusion. And to say that there are many such families would  be an understatement.  What would happen, though, if impoverishment as we know it affected but a small minority of the population?  I think that we
would be on firm-ground to assume that there would be a concomitant decrease in the number of involved families in the child welfare system.   Should we not therefore have as our ultimate goal, not an improved child welfare system, but rather a much decreased in size and
an improved child welfare system? Should we not strive in our efforts to achieve the kind of change that can lead, over time, to exactly that goal?  Should there not be concerted attention
to changing and building the institutions through which all people can, from an
early age, build satisfying and purposeful lives? 

Yes, if we really want to see change; if  the true purpose of change is ultimately families where children can grow and  develop well, then we must conclude that such change must come from outside the child welfare system, as we now know it. 

The kind of change we are speaking about is not easy to achieve nor is it quick. 
It can take many years as children start off in schools staffed by caring, hard-working and passionate teachers who engage students, yes, engage students in study that sometimes excites but surely evokes their thirst for learning.  The almost factory-like
schools we have become accustomed to, the place most middle-class children
somehow manage to chisel out a life in and move forward reasonably well through,
perhaps despite the rigid and mostly boring educational model, has proven to
usually be disastrous for children from impoverished backgrounds. 
So just imagine how children from all backgrounds will be able to develop
and build lives when from an early age they will be part of the kind of
educational system that brings them in and allows them to really want to learn
and allows them to believe there is good reason to attend school and to maximize
their potential.

 This perhaps on the surface sounds simplistic.  But think about  it.  How would these children fare;  what kinds of goals would they set for themselves? 
Would they not have confidence and hope to continue to engage throughout
their lives in work, family and endeavors that satisfy and then guide their own
children in a similar fashion?

Over time, the shamefully large impoverished population, now so much an accepted part of the American landscape,  will cease to exist.

Great schools will not suffice initially.  Many families will want and need real caring, sincere and down-to-earth support in a number of areas:  School, vocational and  avocational endeavors and parenting.   Much of this will need to be on a one-to-one basis. 
Parents should have a real and substantial chance to make changes and to pursue educational, vocational and avocational opportunities.

We will discuss some of these issues in  more detail in the future. 

While of course there is the immediate need  to change much in the way the current child welfare system operates, it is also much more sensible and vital to work toward lessening the need for this system overall.

The conflation of many factors can explain how and why the child welfare system, despite the continuing pattern of inadequate results, chaotic intervention approaches, and immense pain to parents and children, continues, decade after decade.  Reading Helen Epstein's recent article in The New York Review of Books (9/26/13) about Dr. Sara Josephine Baker, “who changed the way we think about public health” and whose innovative and preventive home-visiting program led to a great decrease in children’s mortality rates in early twentieth century New York, led me to think about the child welfare system.  Let me quote:

 Articles about Baker’s lifesaving campaigns appeared in the newspapers from Oklahoma to
 Michigan to California.  In the  late 1910’s, she and other reformers drafted a bill to create a nationwide network of home-visiting programs and maternal and child health clinics modeled
on the programs in New York.  But the American Medical Association (AMA)—backed by powerful Republicans averse to spending money on social welfare—claimed the program was tantamount to
Bolshevism.  Baker was in Washington the day a young New England doctor explained the AMA’s position to a  congressional committee:

We oppose this bill because, if you are going to save the lives of all these women and children at public
expense, what inducement will there be for young men to study medicine?  Senator Sheppard, the chairman, stiffened and leaned forward: “Perhaps I didn’t understand you correctly,” he
said: “You surely don’t mean that you want women and children to die unnecessarily or live in constant danger of sickness so there will be something for young doctors to do?”  “Why
not?” said the New England doctor, who did at least have the courage to admit
the issue: “That’s the will of God, isn’t it?”