The Growing Economic Divide

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The Growing Economic Divide

• An Interactive Presentation/Discussion on Growing
  Economic Inequality, Class, and Child Welfare

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Thanks

• Many of the charts were developed by United for a
  Fair Economy, www.faireconomy.org
• Marguerite Marges, for her paper The Neglect of
  Child Neglect
• Dee Wilson, for his some slides from Substance
  Abuse and Chronic Neglect and Substance Abuse
  and Reunification A Child Welfare Dilemma
• Paul Gorski, EdChange

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• Facilitator Bio
• Felice Yeskel is the Director of Class Action, a
  national, non-profit organization that inspires
  action to end classism by raising awareness,
  facilitating cross-class dialogue, supporting
  cross-class alliances, and working with others to
  promote economic justice. Felice is a Founder and
  was the Co-Director of United for a Fair Economy
  for over six years. She comes from a
  working-class Jewish family from New York Citys
  lower east side.
• She is on the faculty of the Social Justice
  Education Program, at UMass, Amherst where she
  founded and directed The Stonewall Center A LBGT
  Resource Center for over 20 years. She also
  co-directed DiversityWorks, Inc. an organization
  of social justice educators training and
  consulting on issues of diversity and
  multiculturalism. Felice has led hundreds of
  workshops and given talks across the country
  about economic inequality and about healing
  divisions among people of different class
  backgrounds, races, genders, and sexual
  orientations. Felice received her doctorate in
  Organizational Development in 1991.
• She is recently edited a special issue of the
  journal Equity and Excellence in Education on
  Class and Education it came out in March of
  2008. Felice is the co-author of Economic
  Apartheid in America, published by The New Press
  in the fall of 2000 a second edition came out in
  the Fall of 2005. Felice has also written
  chapters in the following books, Teaching for
  Diversity and Social Justice, The Narrow Bridge
  Jewish Perspectives on Multiculturalism, Money
  Talks So Can We, and Coming Out of the Class
  Closet. Articles by Felice have appeared in The
  Diversity Factor, The Womens Review of Books,
  Sojourner, "The Holistic Education Review
  Journal of Women Religion, Sh'ma A Journal
  of Jewish Responsibility, and Bridges A
  Journal for Jewish Feminists and Our Friends.
  Felice has frequently appeared as a guest on
  radio shows across the country discussing issues
  of class, economic justice and social change.
• fyeskel_at_classism.org

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The Context of Our Work

• Social and economic inequalities have risen
  steeply over the past 30 years.
• Children and their families have been
  particularly disadvantaged by this creeping
  impoverishment, which is associated with negative
  effects on parenting capacity and developmental
  outcomes for children.
• The social capital of communities, which consists
  of the cultural resources and inter-personal
  relationships between members, is also eroded by
  inequality and social exclusion.
• Children's welfare and family functioning are
  crucially dependent upon the social support
  available within local communities.
• Helping to build economic and social capital in
  poor communities may be a more effective way of
  promoting children's welfare than formal child
  protection and family support services.
• Whats child welfare?

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Individual Problem or Systemic Problem?

• Delving into case files is an effective way to
  examine the issues that caseworkers confront
  every day. But focusing on individual cases also
  obscures systemic issues that profoundly affect
  child welfare decision-making.
• Does the child welfare system sometimes
• Separate children from caring parents instead
  of providing services that would address the
  family's problems?
• Concentrate more on finding fault with parents
  than on meeting children's needs, relying on
  questionable therapies rather than concrete
  solutions?
• Why are so many of the families working-class or
  poor?
• Social factors and political decisions often
  determine which families get caught in child
  protective services and what happens to them once
  they become involved.

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Above the Water Line
The Individual
History Legacy Social Policies Discrimination
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What happened in Child Welfare

• The profile of child welfare families and of
  children entering the foster care system changed
  dramatically in the 1980s Neglect, substance
  abuse, high rates of infant placements and
  placements of pre-school children, long length of
  stay in out-of-home care, reduced rates of
  reunification, and high rates of re-entry into
  care resulted in large increases in states
  foster care population.
• This constellation of factors was the child
  welfare context which led to the passage of the
  1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act (AFSA), the
  most important new child welfare law since 1980.
• AFSA set strict timelines for public child
  welfare agencies to work with birth parents who
  have had children removed from their custody
  Once a child has been in out-of-home care 15 out
  of 22 months and cannot safely be returned to
  parents, the child welfare agency is required to
  file for termination of parent rights, absent
  compelling reasons to do otherwise.
• AFSA also clearly states that child safety is the
  pre-eminent child welfare goal, so that decision
  makers will have an explicit guideline if faced
  with a choice between child safety and supporting
  and strengthening families
• AFSA also established fiscal incentives for
  public child welfare systems to increase
  adoptions and, nationally adoptions have
  increased from about 20,000 children per year to
  more than 50,000 children per year.

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Poverty/Wealth-Classism means we all lose

• Long term poverty is associated with neighborhood
  concentrations of poverty, family structure,
  educational outcomes, parents work histories and
  change in labor market conditions
• However, even when these conditions are
  controlled for there is a 2-1 difference in
  lifetime earnings between children growing up in
  middle class families vs. poor families.
• (Corcoran Chaudry, 1997)
• According to federal statistics, black children
  in the child welfare system are placed in foster
  care at twice the rate for white children. A
  national study of child protective services by
  the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
  reported that "minority children, and in
  particular African American children, are more
  likely to be in foster care placement than
  receive in-home services, even when they have the
  same problems and characteristics as white
  children"
• The costs of classism to children with class
  privilege may be the under-reporting of child
  welfare cases

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• 1. The Base Shift Equality ? Equity
• a. Is every child/family treated the same, and
  have the opportunity to receive the best possible
  care and treatment, regardless of race,
  ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender,
  religion, first language, sexual orientation,
  (dis)ability, or any other dimension of
  difference?
• b. As long as the answer to these questions
  remains no, am I, and is the system, willing to
  be transformed?
• 2. Cultural Competence ? Equity and Social
  Justice
• a. Is the focus on feeling good and celebrating
  difference or on institutional change?
• b. Am I willing to push myself and the system out
  of our comfort zone to honestly and continually
  assess and address inequities including racism,
  sexism, heterosexism (homophobia), classism, and
  ageism?
• 3. Difference as the Problem ? Inequity as the
  Problem
• a. Do I, or does my institution, tend to
  problematize difference and its complexities,
  such as language diversity, instead of
  problematizing the history and present of
  inequities that have led us to a point of
  remaining unprepared to effectively and
  efficiently navigate these differences?
• b. Am I, or is the institution, willing to tackle
  inequitieseven those that assign privilege to me
  and the majority of those in power in the system?
• 4. Expectation Client Will Adapt ? Responsibility
  Ours to Be Transformed
• a. Do I, or does the institution, believe that it
  is the responsibility of the patient or client to
  adapt to the mainstream culture?
• b. Am I, or is the institution, willing to change
  to the same extent that people outside the
  mainstream culture are forced to change just to
  navigate our services?
• Thanks to Paul Gorski, EdChange

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