They Can Go Home Again -- Maybe

At the same time authorities down in Texas are tearing babes and sucklings out of the arms of their biological mothers, a Children and Youth Services agency in northeastern Pennsylvania has developed strange new respect for the notion of family cohesion. Not that they will just arbitrarily return children who have been removed from problem families, without some sort of preparatory procedure, mind. But the one-way street to permanent foster care has at least been paved with one lane going the other way. The program is called "intensive reunification", and is based on the existing system at what is called "Treatment Court". (I'll bet you didn't know there was an entirely separate court system to just oversee "treatments", did you? I _told_ you we were all sick!) In any case, it represents a unified effort among a number of social welfare entities, and the key quote -- from a judge -- is "The best place for a child is with the parents, if they can be." I can hardly express how radical a departure this is from the orthodoxy of what I call the Combined Nanny Establishment, which seems to feel that the family as an institution has been tried and has been found sorely wanting. Their traditional position is that institutionalization on any level is preferable to allowing children to remain in the clutches of the "family unit" with all of its attendant horrors. So it is good to see this trend suffer a small reversal -- kind of like the "Doomsday Clock" being set back a minute or two. Of course, the entire process is still firmly under the baleful eye of the state, and I imagine that once "on the books", no family will ever be able to get off. Still, it beats the bad old days.

I'll add a quote from the director of the program in Lackawanna County, PA: "For about 100 years, child services were getting it wrong." One hundred years. Think about that for a minute. That's three or four generations (and, for some "welfare families" more like six). Ever wonder where all the street gangs come from? This might be a clue. And, how surprising is it that it took them so long to catch on? Number one, they weren't looking for any evidence that would go against their premises or procedures. And they were cherry-picking horror stories about what happens when "the system" lets a child "fall through the cracks" (as if being committed to foster care is not a "crack" in itself -- or more like a bottomless pit). And -- "mantra alert" -- every government program is a jobs program, as we know. You don't create more social welfare slots by returning kids to their families. So the level of -- at least potential -- sacrifice inherent in this sea change should not be sneezed at. But after all, this is just one county, and there are many more to go.

[based on a story from the Scranton Times-Tribune, printed in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review on April 20]