Nobody's children : abuse and neglect, foster drift, and the adoption alternative / Elizabeth Bartholet.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bartholet, Elizabeth.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Child welfare--Government policy--United States.

Child welfare.

Child welfare--Government policy.

Kinship care.

United States.

Child abuse--United States.

Child abuse.

Children--Institutional care--United States.

Children.

Children--Institutional care.

Foster home care--United States.

Foster home care.

Adoption--United States.

Adoption.

Kinship care--United States.

Physical Description:

viii, 304 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Boston : Beacon Press, [1999]

Summary:

Upwards of three million children annually are subject to severe forms of abuse or neglect, and more than half a million live in foster or institutional care, with the numbers growing exponentially. Substance abuse is wreaking havoc in homes and in the child welfare system--70 to 80 percent of the children victimized by maltreatment are being raised by parents who use and abuse alcohol, cocaine, and other drugs. Children removed from their homes languish in institutional care, often bouncing back and forth between foster families and their original families, with state agencies reluctant to terminate parental rights and move them on to adoption, however dim the prospects for nurturing at home.

Nobody's Children is an intense look at how we treat children in crisis. Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Bartholet, one of the nation's leading experts on family and civil rights law, challenges the accepted orthodoxy that views children as exclusive possessions of their kinship and their racial groups and locks them into inadequate biological and foster homes. She asks us to apply the lessons learned from the battered women's movement as we consider battered children, and to question why family preservation ideology still reigns supreme when children rather than adult women are involved.

Bartholet assesses promising new developments in the policy world, and warns of the pitfalls that threaten real progress. She asks us to take seriously, for the first time in our history, the adoption option, arguing that if we would only break down the racial and other barriers to adoption, we could give children the nurturing homes they need. She calls on the entire community to take responsibility for its children, to think of the children at risk of abuse and neglect as belonging to all of us, and to ensure that "Nobody's Children" become treasured members of somebody's family.

Contents:

Kinship and Community 2

The Race/Class Problem 4

Blood Bias and Family Autonomy Politics 7

Two Stories of a Family at Risk for Child Maltreatment 8

New Directions for the Twenty-First Century? 22

History and Politics

1. The Inherited Tradition: Parenting Rights and State Wrongs 33

Autonomous Families 33

Family Preservation Policies and Practices 38

2. The Politics 44

The Left-Right Coalition: An Unholy Alliance? 44

Lessons From the Battered Women's Movement 50

Politics for the Future 54

The Problem

3. Modern-Day Orphans 59

Abuse and Neglect 61

Substance Abuse: At the Heart of the Problem 67

Foster and Institutional Care 81

The Impact on Children 95

4. Underintervention Vs. Overintervention 98

The Ongoing Tradition

5. Traditional Programs Weather the Storm 113

Family Preservation in Its Infinite Variety 113

Community Preservation: Race Matching and Related Policies 123

6. "New" Programs Promote Traditional Ideas 141

Family Group Decision Making 142

Community Partnerships 146

The New Permanency Movement 154

Promising New Directions and Traditional Pitfalls

7. Intervening Early with Home Visitation 163

The Promise 165

Some Pitfalls 169

8. Taking Adoption Seriously 176

The Promise 176

Promising Initiatives of the Day 186

Some Pitfalls 192

Radical Revolution or Modest Revisionism? 203

Confronting the Challenging Issues

9. Substance Abuse 207

The Problem 207

The Traditional System's Response 208

The Harm to Children 212

The Future: Pitfalls and Promise 217

10. Race, Poverty, and Historic Injustice 233

The Connection with Child Maltreatment 233

Exploitation Stories of the Twentieth Century 235

Outlines of a New Story 238.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 245-291) and index.

ISBN:

0807023183

OCLC:

41039845