Perhaps you've heard the commercials: "You don't have to be perfect to be a perfect parent."
The reminder comes from advocates for adoption of foster kids, a population that numbers 102,000 across the United States, according ot AdoptUSKids, the group in part responsible for the adoptive parents recruitment campaign.
What’s The Point?
Child advocates deserve credit for taking a more comprehensive and humane approach to dealing with the problems of children in neglectful situations.
A new program in Arkansas appears to take the same approach with biological parents who might have, in the past, lost their children, at least temporarily, to the state amid concerns of neglect. The program seeks to reduce the number of children entering the foster system to begin with, by allowing the state to divert federal money meant to pay for foster care to less-invasive cures to problems. Those cures could be family counseling, lessons in certain parenting skills or paying for services that will help eradicate a general issue of neglect, such as pest control in a home.
Indeed, the state is embracing the idea that no parent is perfect, but some can be fixed to the point that no child is endangered. Not all, but some.
Last year, when Arkansas implemented the program, advocates for children were naturally wary, as they should be. When one hears a report of neglect involving the child, the gut reaction is to remove the child immediately from the adult who is failing them. The new program recognizes, however, that state intervention can happen without putting an atomic bomb at the center of the nuclear family.
The program, according to children's advocates, does not appear to have watered down the state's response to children in dangerous situations. Those kids are still removed. The program recognizes, however, that a one-size-fits-all response government is usually more comfortable applying doesn't always serve the best interests of the families involved or the state's overburdened foster care system.
Let's face it: For most of us, our reaction to news of neglect involving children is naturally to remove them, to "save" them from the adults who allowed that situation to develop. What those involved daily with responding to these cases know is the situations run the spectrum. Not every neglect case involves children living in feces with 25 cats.
"We've had cases in rural counties where children were reported as being hungry and found a single father who never had to fix nutritious meals and was doing whatever he could," Mona Davis, planning manager for foster care for the Arkansas Department of Human Services, recently told one of our reporters. "We got him cooking classes and bought him a crock pot."
It should come as no surprise that sometimes parents lack the skills to necessary to parenting, in many cases because their own parents lacked them, or at the least, didn't pass them along. Or perhaps a primary caregiver is no longer in the picture and the one remaining is struggling to do what's right, but falling short due to issues that can be resolved without destroying a family.
We commend state officials and advocates for children for striving toward a more humane goal, one that recognizes the value of family, even ones that are flawed in meaningful ways. As long as protections are afforded to those in danger, it only makes sense to devote resources to the least costly, least disruptive solution.
Commentary on 04/16/2014