removals

Driven by evidence that child welfare decision-makers judge parents of color more harshly and are more likely to remove their children, there is growing interest in a program that proposes to weed out racial bias when social workers weighing allegations of abuse and neglect decide whether to remove a child from their parents.

Let’s say that my neighbor is upset because he believes I encroached on his property by building a fence on it. So he sneaks into court – without my knowledge – and obtains a court order from a judge requiring me to immediately remove the fence.

Latagia Tyronce’s two children were playing and one, a toddler, was burned by a blow-dryer. Despite the support of the children’s grandmother, and the compelling evidence that this was an accident, Ohio’s Lucas County Department of Children’s Services removed Tyronce’s children and she was arrested for felony child endangerment.

When Kathy Cline sought help at a downtown Los Angeles shelter with her 13-year-old son, it had been a long journey to that doorstep. She’d been sick and hospitalized, which led to her being unable to pay her rent.

Bexar County, which is home to San Antonio, leads the State of Texas in the rate of removal of children in child abuse and neglect cases and in the rate of re-victimization of children who have been previously removed by Child Protective Services (CPS) and returned to their families.