Exposing the Truth About Child Welfare Systems

[ My contribution to a discussion in Vital City ]

By Jeffrey Butts
March 27, 2024

One federally sponsored study from the 1970s changed my life. The research was not statistically brilliant. It did not break new ground in theory or methodology. It simply investigated factors shaping agency decisions in the child welfare system, which can harm poor and disadvantaged families with young children. I was once part of that system.

Before earning a Ph.D., I was a social worker in Oregon’s foster care system, coordinating services for children in foster homes scattered around Portland. Less than a year into the job, my supervisor moved me into the agency’s specialized team for “permanency planning.” We managed the cases of children most likely to be stuck in foster care. We were to act aggressively to return the children home or to assemble the evidence needed to petition the court for termination of parental rights to facilitate legal adoption.

I was horrified by the job. The children in my caseload were in foster care because their families were desperately poor and suffering from mental health issues, drug and alcohol abuse, unemployment and inadequate housing. How hard was I supposed to fight all those social and economic factors before just giving up and working on the termination of parental rights? For me, it was an exhausting ethical struggle. Some of my colleagues appeared less troubled. They began preparing for termination hearings almost as soon as they received a new case.

I needed information. I went to the campus library at Portland State University. That’s where I found a 1978 study by Arthur Emlen and his colleagues at PSU’s Regional Research Institute for Human Services, “Overcoming Barriers to Planning for Children in Foster Care.” With funding from the federal agency then known as the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), researchers studied the factors shaping permanency planning for children in foster care. The study found that agency actions to remove or return children to families were not simply due to case characteristics. They could be predicted in part by worker beliefs and the general climate of attitudes in the agency. We were part of the problem.

I eagerly prepared a summary of the research to present at the next staff meeting of the permanency planning team. I still remember the brief silence that followed my presentation before one of my colleagues said, “Yeah, but that’s just research bullshit.” It was the first time I thought I just might be a researcher.

Jeffrey Butts is the director of the Research and Evaluation Center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.