Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 603 ｜ How CPS & Foster Care Corruption is Killing Kids ｜ Guest： Naomi Schaefer Riley

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable.

00:00:01.760 Happy Wednesday.

00:00:03.440 This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.

00:00:06.680 Go to goodranchers.com slash Allie for American meat delivered right to your front door. 1.00

00:00:11.580 That's goodranchers.com slash Allie.

00:00:23.260 Okay, guys, have I got the conversation for you today?

00:00:27.760 We are talking to author of No Way to Treat a Child, Naomi Riley, and she is going to talk

00:00:34.940 to us about CPS and the foster care system and how progressive racialized ideology is

00:00:43.000 destroying the lives of children in the name of equity, in the name of so-called fairness

00:00:49.060 and social and racial justice.

00:00:51.560 Children, in particular, Black children, are being left in the hands and in the care 0.94

00:00:58.060 of the people who are abusing them.

00:01:00.360 And this was a very stirring conversation for me.

00:01:03.480 It was a surprising conversation to me.

00:01:05.800 As we'll talk about, we tend to have a very negative view as conservatives of CPS, and

00:01:12.640 I think in some ways rightfully so.

00:01:14.540 But we need to talk about how to make the child welfare system not just go away, but better

00:01:21.360 because it is a necessary safeguard for children.

00:01:25.280 And so Naomi is going to give us so much insight today.

00:01:28.680 You're probably going to be surprised by what you learn as well.

00:01:32.220 At times, it's kind of gut-wrenching and mind-blowing.

00:01:36.140 But she's also going to leave us advice at the end and some equipment for how we can tackle

00:01:44.280 this huge issue of lack of child welfare in our communities.

00:01:50.240 This is something that we are called to as Christians.

00:01:53.340 As I've mentioned before, and I just think it's kind of a stunning revelation if you've

00:01:57.340 never thought about it, Christians, Christianity changed the way the world saw children. 1.00

00:02:04.760 And I'll just reiterate what I explained.

00:02:07.120 I think it was a couple weeks ago at this point that when Christianity came about 2,000

00:02:13.140 years ago in the ancient pagan world and ancient Greece and ancient Rome, really society was

00:02:20.120 set up in kind of concentric circles, the center circle being the adult free male.

00:02:26.660 Everyone outside of that, everyone who was a slave, everyone who was a woman, everyone who

00:02:31.360 was elderly, everyone who was a child, was really and truly marginalized.

00:02:37.000 They were pushed to the side.

00:02:38.340 They were seen as objects to be used and exploited by the adult free male. 0.67

00:02:44.480 Children, in part, just because they weren't adults and so they had a lower mental and physical

00:02:49.320 capacity so they weren't seen as useful.

00:02:51.640 But also because there was a high child mortality rate at the time, they were very much objectified.

00:02:58.700 They were sexually exploited.

00:02:59.980 They were often abused and neglected, especially young girls.

00:03:05.620 And then Christianity came along and radically changed that over time. 0.91

00:03:10.620 It introduced and really universalized this idea that, of course, had existed when ancient

00:03:18.640 Israel was established or really at the beginning of time by God, that human beings are made in

00:03:25.100 God's image.

00:03:25.660 Therefore, we are of equal worth.

00:03:27.560 No matter our age, no matter our mental capacity or physical capabilities, we are all of the

00:03:35.120 same worth and of the same value.

00:03:37.920 And then Jesus adds to that in this unquantifiably significant way in saying that we are all equally

00:03:46.760 dead in sin apart from Christ.

00:03:48.700 And we are all equally alive in Christ and friends with God and made holy and righteous

00:03:56.620 when we come to him by grace through faith.

00:04:00.200 So this radical equality through the idea of us all being made in the image of God, no

00:04:05.840 matter who we are or where we come from or how much money we have.

00:04:09.880 We see throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament that God hates partiality, particularly

00:04:14.940 when it comes to law giving to Israel, we see God say multiple times that he believes it

00:04:20.120 is an injustice in court to either show partiality or favoritism to the poor or weak person in

00:04:26.180 a case or the rich and powerful person in a case.

00:04:29.460 There is this radical equality that is introduced by Judeo-Christian thought, but especially by

00:04:35.600 Christian theology and Christian orthodoxy.

00:04:38.540 Of course, we also see in Jesus' own life of the many, many things that Jesus did, of

00:04:45.140 course, we see that the authors of the gospel thought it significant and necessary to include

00:04:51.620 the story of Jesus calling the children to himself.

00:04:55.500 The children wanted to come up to him.

00:04:57.760 His disciples wanted to shoo them away, which was probably pretty standard for the time.

00:05:03.040 And Jesus actually chastised the adult males, chastised the disciples and said,

00:05:07.940 no, let the little children come to me.

00:05:10.900 And Jesus actually says, you have to have faith like a child.

00:05:14.220 You have to be like a child in order to enter the kingdom of heaven.

00:05:18.560 Of course, he's speaking in the spiritual sense, but how much he valued children, not just to

00:05:23.460 bring the children to himself, but to say that their faith, their trust in him is something

00:05:29.020 that adults should model their faith after.

00:05:32.840 That would have been radical at the time.

00:05:34.880 When we see the kind of hierarchical roles, not challenged in the New Testament, but redefined

00:05:44.200 and taken to a different level.

00:05:45.840 For example, in Ephesians 5, as again, we talked about a couple weeks ago, that slaves are told

00:05:53.180 to serve their masters, not just by way of people pleasing, but actually as they are serving

00:05:59.760 the Lord, that would have been radical at the time, not because it said that slaves have

00:06:04.800 to obey their masters, but because there is actually an important relationship there that

00:06:11.280 reflects the Christian and the Lord.

00:06:13.860 So that kind of like heartfelt obedience and then taking care of a bondservant and a slave

00:06:19.360 in a respectful way by the master, that would have been seen as radical at the time.

00:06:25.260 The passage in Ephesians 5 that talks about children obeying their fathers, that's not

00:06:32.580 the radical part, but instructing fathers to then not provoke their child to anger, that

00:06:37.620 would have been radical.

00:06:38.700 It wouldn't have been radical, as it says in Ephesians 5 at the time that it was written

00:06:43.060 for wives to submit to their husbands. 0.89

00:06:45.200 But what was radical at the time was telling husbands in that passage to love their wives as

00:06:50.940 Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

00:06:55.000 And so while the gospel doesn't necessarily automatically abolish all hierarchies, it does

00:07:03.540 change the way we treat one another in these kind of hierarchical relationships.

00:07:09.660 And of course, there is not any kind of condoning of slavery in scripture.

00:07:14.100 And of course, the kind of chattel slavery that we saw in the United States is absolutely an 0.83

00:07:19.060 abomination and evil.

00:07:20.380 But what I'm trying to say is that the gospel radicalizes how people in power and people

00:07:27.280 underneath power, how they relate to one another through this lens of radical equality of people

00:07:34.440 being made in the image of God and everyone needing equally salvation through Christ.

00:07:42.940 And so I know that was a rant, but I say all that to say we got to care about this because

00:07:48.180 Christians have always been countercultural when it comes to the protection of the most 1.00

00:07:52.800 vulnerable, the protection of children.

00:07:55.400 The world doesn't care about children.

00:07:57.360 They don't.

00:07:57.860 They say they do, but they don't.

00:08:00.400 Children are always on the altar of adults' whims.

00:08:03.800 They're always the first to be sacrificed because they can't stand up for themselves.

00:08:07.260 So what we're going to talk about today in the child welfare system is something that we

00:08:11.620 should greatly care about.

00:08:12.820 We are carrying on the legacy of Christianity, the legacy of true biblical justice by caring

00:08:20.440 about these subjects and caring for children.

00:08:24.320 All right.

00:08:24.540 We'll get into that conversation in just one second.

00:08:30.200 Naomi, thank you so much for joining us.

00:08:32.840 Can you tell everyone who you are and what you do?

00:08:35.700 Sure.

00:08:36.280 I'm Naomi Schaefer Riley.

00:08:37.640 I'm a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where I study child welfare.

00:08:42.680 I've been a journalist for about 20 years.

00:08:44.860 I worked at the Wall Street Journal for a while.

00:08:46.900 I was a columnist for the New York Post, and I've written a bunch of books.

00:08:50.320 The most recent one is called No Way to Treat a Child, and it's about the problems with our

00:08:54.220 child welfare system.

00:08:55.580 And that's what we're going to focus on today.

00:08:57.120 I'm really looking forward to hearing more of your insight on this.

00:09:00.600 Can you first just tell us why you wrote this book?

00:09:03.080 What first interested you in this subject?

00:09:04.980 Sure.

00:09:06.700 Well, there were actually a couple of previous topics that I wrote about that kind of led

00:09:10.180 me to this.

00:09:10.900 The first one actually was a book I wrote about American Indians called The New Trail of Tears.

00:09:16.020 And for that book, I actually ended up traveling to a bunch of Indian communities and reservations

00:09:20.460 across the country.

00:09:22.060 And unfortunately, for your viewers and listeners who don't know, there are some of the worst

00:09:27.040 child welfare outcomes in those communities.

00:09:29.360 Some of the highest rates of abuse and foster care and very few places for those kids to

00:09:35.920 go, unfortunately.

00:09:37.440 And the other thing that kind of led me in this direction was I was...

00:09:41.940 So, I'm sorry.

00:09:42.700 Yeah.

00:09:42.820 Oh, sure.

00:09:43.540 When you're saying some of the worst case...

00:09:44.460 No, that's fine.

00:09:45.420 One of...

00:09:45.860 Some of the worst cases of abuse, you're talking about abuse at the hands of the caregivers and

00:09:50.560 parents, not abuse in the foster care system.

00:09:53.900 So, when you're saying, okay, got it.

00:09:56.020 Yeah.

00:09:56.340 So, I mean, there is a lot of dysfunction in a lot of these communities.

00:10:00.340 Unfortunately, there are very high rates of alcohol and substance abuse.

00:10:04.020 And we know that those are really significantly correlated with rates of child abuse and neglect

00:10:09.940 at the hands of caretakers, usually parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles.

00:10:15.140 And so, we see that to a very significant degree in American Indian communities.

00:10:20.200 And so, when I came back from those trips, I just kind of started to wonder what the child

00:10:25.500 welfare system looks like in the rest of the country.

00:10:27.840 And I was writing a column for the New York Post at the time.

00:10:31.580 And I started to follow some of the high-profile child fatalities that happen in New York City

00:10:37.740 for kids, you know, kids who are really known to the system.

00:10:42.700 Like, we knew that their parents were not treating them well.

00:10:45.820 They had been reported multiple times to the Administration for Children's Services.

00:10:50.680 They had been investigated.

00:10:52.440 And unfortunately, they still died.

00:10:58.820 And I just became sort of gobsmacked at the fact that we could know about what was going

00:11:04.180 on in these homes and make a decision to leave children in those dangerous situations.

00:11:08.160 And so, a combination of these things kind of led me down this path to look at really what

00:11:13.860 all the child welfare agencies across the country look like, what their policies are like, get

00:11:19.340 into family court and foster care and adoption.

00:11:23.360 And anyway, yeah, so the result of all that is this book.

00:11:27.240 As conservatives, I think that we are automatically distrustful and for good reason of government

00:11:33.800 agencies, especially when it comes to dealing with children.

00:11:38.120 And I think when the average person, or at least the average conservative, thinks about

00:11:42.200 CPS, and maybe I'm only speaking for myself, but I'm probably speaking for a lot of people

00:11:46.160 in my audience, too.

00:11:47.600 I tend to think, not based on any data, but just based on my impression and maybe some of

00:11:53.660 the saddest stories that I've seen on social media, is that CPS is, by and large, taking

00:12:00.280 kids away from their parents who don't need to be taken away from their parents.

00:12:04.980 That, to me, is the impression that I get, that that's the real problem, that CPS is

00:12:09.540 intervening when they don't need to intervene, that maybe a mother is taking their child to

00:12:15.760 the hospital because they fell and bumped their head because that's what toddlers do.

00:12:20.520 CPS show up and then these terrible things happen where kids are separated from their parents

00:12:24.440 for months.

00:12:25.500 But really, what you more focus on in your book, you talk about a wide array of problems.

00:12:30.280 What you focus more on in your book is that CPS very often tends to not intervene or intervene

00:12:38.280 as much as they should when it comes to cases of child abuse, especially when it comes to

00:12:44.320 the Black family for reasons of, I guess, equity.

00:12:49.040 So can you talk more about that?

00:12:50.720 What did you find?

00:12:51.720 What are the real biggest problems that are going on in CPS and the foster care system?

00:12:57.240 I know that's a big question, so take as long as you need to answer it.

00:13:01.800 So I do want to start with your initial impression because I think you are representative of a

00:13:06.960 large swath of conservative and maybe more libertarian leaning folks who think about CPS

00:13:12.940 and think this is government intrusion in the lives of private citizens.

00:13:17.460 And what I would like to shift the conversation to is thinking about CPS more in a role of law

00:13:23.640 enforcement. And I think conservatives understand the place of law enforcement in our society

00:13:28.820 and the importance of law enforcement in terms of protecting the most vulnerable citizens in this

00:13:34.840 country from violence and crimes at the hands of others.

00:13:39.000 And what's happening in these situations with kids is that there is nobody else to protect them

00:13:45.060 in these situations.

00:13:45.940 They are living in families where they're being repeatedly abused and neglected.

00:13:51.840 And the only institution that can stand between them and caretakers who are putting them in danger

00:14:00.760 is CPS.

00:14:02.160 So I sort of liken it to law enforcement.

00:14:05.440 And it's interesting because I think what you're seeing increasingly is that certain activists in the

00:14:10.840 world of child welfare also liken CPS to law enforcement.

00:14:15.060 And in the same way that they want to abolish the police, they'd also like to abolish CPS.

00:14:21.080 So we need to kind of think about this in those terms.

00:14:23.900 Like, we don't think it's a good idea as conservatives to abolish the police because we understand

00:14:28.880 whatever abuses may occur here and there.

00:14:32.080 We understand the important role that the police play in protecting our most vulnerable citizens.

00:14:37.480 And we need to understand the important role that CPS plays in protecting children.

00:14:42.000 So what we have to understand then is, again, making this parallel with the kind of abolish

00:14:48.460 the police movement.

00:14:49.700 There are a lot of folks out there who charge that child protective services and child welfare

00:14:54.580 agencies and family courts are racist.

00:14:58.100 They are systemic racism.

00:14:59.560 They claim they look at, of course, racial disparities.

00:15:03.180 And just as racial disparities don't tell the entire story with regard to law enforcement,

00:15:09.480 they're not telling the whole story with regard to CPS.

00:15:12.860 So it is absolutely true that Black children in this country are investigated at a higher rate

00:15:18.920 than their white peers.

00:15:21.160 The charges against their parents tend to be substantiated at a higher rate than their white

00:15:26.180 peers.

00:15:26.660 And they're removed to foster care at a higher rate than their white peers.

00:15:30.540 But what these statistics don't tell you is that Black children in this country are twice 0.61

00:15:37.700 as likely to be abused and they're three times as likely to die from maltreatment as their 0.93

00:15:43.500 white peers.

00:15:44.420 So if you think about it in terms of child protective services, in terms of who it is that we need 0.69

00:15:51.620 to ensure is safe, you are going to find that there are going to be more Black children who 0.97

00:15:57.200 are caught up in the system.

00:15:58.320 And, you know, there are a lot of reasons for that.

00:16:01.300 Like, again, whenever we sort of have these very superficial conversations about racial

00:16:05.680 disparities, it doesn't take account of really important factors that go into them.

00:16:11.020 So, for instance, yes, you could say that Black men, you know, are more likely to have encounters

00:16:15.800 with police. 0.98

00:16:17.000 They're also more likely to commit many violent crimes in this country.

00:16:20.660 Similarly, when we look at the child welfare system, you know, the family structure is a huge

00:16:27.340 predictor of whether a child is going to be safe or not.

00:16:31.440 And a lot of, you know, sociologists, researchers refer to this as the mother's boyfriend problem.

00:16:36.640 If a child is living with a non-relative male, typically, you know, could be a stepfather,

00:16:42.160 but more often it's just the mother's boyfriend.

00:16:43.900 They are 11 times as likely to be abused as a child who is living with two married parents.

00:16:50.100 And it turns out that family structure is not distributed evenly among racial groups

00:16:54.960 in this country.

00:16:55.820 And Black children, as a result, are not as safe in many instances as white children, 0.99

00:17:01.220 unfortunately. 0.97

00:17:01.660 Yes, and let me just punctuate what you're saying with your own words.

00:17:05.480 This is what you wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

00:17:07.740 You were reviewing a book by Dorothy Roberts.

00:17:11.600 She wrote a book called Torn Apart, and she is arguing basically what you are refuting right

00:17:18.080 now, that because of the disparities that we see in the foster care system, because Black

00:17:22.000 children are more likely to be taken from their homes and put in the foster care system,

00:17:26.320 that shows that CPS is really just an extension of slavery.

00:17:29.820 This is kind of the whole critical race theory premise that oppression of Black people really

00:17:35.620 hasn't lessened since 1619.

00:17:38.100 It's just kind of changed forms.

00:17:39.700 And you're absolutely right that they use the police as an example of that, that it's

00:17:44.360 just a reiteration or a different iteration of slave patrol, you know, in the slave era.

00:17:51.660 And then it changed during Jim Crow.

00:17:53.760 And now the police is basically functioning in the same role.

00:17:57.680 And they point to disparities in order to prove that.

00:18:01.560 Actually, the entire conversation about systemic racism from the left basically boils down to

00:18:06.840 pointing to disparities as proof of discrimination.

00:18:09.800 But as Thomas Sowell has written so much and so thoroughly on, disparities are not in themselves

00:18:17.280 proof of discrimination.

00:18:18.960 You have to look at all of the other factors, as you mentioned, the makeup of the family.

00:18:22.680 But let me get to some of the statistics that you wrote about in the Wall Street Journal.

00:18:27.420 You said, according to the latest federal data, 1,750 children died in 2020 as a result of being

00:18:34.660 abused or neglected.

00:18:36.220 Of those children, 34.9% were Black, though Blacks only make up 13% of the U.S. population.

00:18:44.360 Black children were three times as likely to die from maltreatment as white children.

00:18:49.020 And the number had gone up 17% from the year before.

00:18:53.860 And then you get into Dorothy Roberts's arguments in Torn Apart, which are, as I just talked about,

00:19:02.400 basically that these disparities are not because Black children are being abused at higher rates,

00:19:07.520 but because of this racist system.

00:19:09.360 You also mentioned that the communist, Angela Davis, she endorsed this book and said that

00:19:15.360 it was great, but actually, and I think you argue this, and so I want you to keep going

00:19:20.760 on this.

00:19:21.320 Actually, this kind of thinking puts more Black children in harm's way because it is then informing

00:19:28.180 policy.

00:19:28.960 You mentioned that the Biden administration in charge of child welfare compared workers in

00:19:34.620 the in this field, in the child welfare field, to overseers on plantations and advise the

00:19:41.580 public not to call child protective services.

00:19:45.740 She apparently said save Black children from that knock on the door in that tunnel of child 1.00

00:19:50.320 welfare out of which they may never see their way.

00:19:53.300 So in her opinion, in this official's opinion, CPS is a bigger threat than abusive parents,

00:20:01.220 boyfriends, step parents.

00:20:03.540 Yeah, it's it's pretty shocking.

00:20:06.080 I think a lot of people thought that this whole abolish child welfare discussion was kind of an

00:20:10.520 academic conversation that was happening outside of the realm of actual policymaking.

00:20:16.400 And a lot of people talk about, you know, critical race theory and these other abstract theories

00:20:20.520 as things that, you know, they're just kind of things that happen in law schools and they

00:20:24.580 don't necessarily affect real people's lives.

00:20:27.360 This is an instance where this dangerous ideology is spreading across the country throughout our

00:20:32.220 child welfare agencies, and it is harming the most vulnerable kids.

00:20:36.860 So let me just give you a couple of examples of kind of what is going on in these agencies.

00:20:41.460 The first thing is that they believe it is important, almost no matter what, to keep

00:20:47.400 kids with their families.

00:20:48.760 Now, as conservatives, of course, we think, yes, of course, kids should be with their families.

00:20:53.380 That sounds like a great idea.

00:20:54.900 But we don't understand that these are parents who have repeatedly abused or neglected their

00:21:01.120 children.

00:21:01.400 And I just want to pause here to just talk about what neglect is, because there's a lot

00:21:05.840 of misinformation out there about what is what constitutes neglect.

00:21:10.160 There are people out there who say, oh, neglect is just when you let your eight year old walk

00:21:14.100 to the park by themselves and CPS decides that they're in danger and pick them up.

00:21:18.000 No, most neglect cases in this country are happening with kids age zero to three.

00:21:23.500 They're happening when adults are leaving those kids alone, unsupervised, when those parents are

00:21:29.080 so strung out on drugs that they cannot feed or clean or supervise or provide medical care

00:21:35.280 to those children.

00:21:36.700 Neglect is sometimes when you let an abusive partner come into your home, knowing that that

00:21:43.580 person is going to physically abuse your child in some way.

00:21:48.300 These are all instances of neglect.

00:21:50.160 Neglect is actually responsible for more fatalities, child fatalities in this country than abuse

00:21:55.300 is.

00:21:56.120 Neglect is very dangerous.

00:21:57.540 So I just want to, you know, sort of bracket that for a second, because so what's going

00:22:01.780 on in these agencies is they say it's so important that the child we preserve this

00:22:07.220 relationship between the child and the family at all costs.

00:22:09.840 And I say to people, you know, it's like if you if you had this policy with regard to

00:22:14.680 domestic abuse, you know, the police came because your boyfriend or husband was beating

00:22:20.600 you.

00:22:21.360 Now, imagine if the first question they asked was, OK, guys, how can we get you back together?

00:22:26.120 But that is exactly what's going on when a child protective services is coming into this

00:22:31.920 home.

00:22:32.360 They are looking around, trying to figure out any way possible to leave this child with

00:22:37.760 the people who are abusing and neglecting them.

00:22:40.160 And then even on the rare occasions when that child is removed, the entire driving ideology

00:22:46.580 of these agencies and family courts is, OK, how can we get you back together?

00:22:51.280 And so we provide all sorts of services to the families.

00:22:55.160 We do anger management, addiction counseling, parenting lessons, anything we can think of

00:23:01.160 in order to try to reunite this child with their family.

00:23:04.440 And often we're doing this over and over and over again.

00:23:07.640 The parents, because drugs are such a big issue, are often relapsing multiple times.

00:23:13.220 And especially with young children, we are really interrupting their development by constantly

00:23:19.120 taking them in and out of their biological home, putting them in multiple foster homes

00:23:23.860 so that they cannot form the kind of secure attachment that we know is so important to their

00:23:29.780 development.

00:23:30.620 And with regard to race, what you see is we are even more inclined to leave black children

00:23:36.740 in their home because no agency wants to be accused of racism.

00:23:40.440 No social worker wants to be accused of racism.

00:23:43.840 I did a story on a judge in New Orleans who has been honored repeatedly because she specifically

00:23:49.640 will not remove or will not approve the removal of black children from their home. 0.84

00:23:55.100 And when I interviewed her, she said, I want to know why there aren't more Vietnamese children

00:23:59.280 in my courtroom. 0.93

00:24:00.760 And to me, that's such a silly, it's an absurd question. 0.97

00:24:05.740 Right. 0.96

00:24:06.440 That's not the question.

00:24:07.520 The question is, are the kids in front of you in danger and what difference does it

00:24:11.720 make what their skin color is?

00:24:13.240 Right.

00:24:14.160 And that's the danger of prioritizing this newfangled definition of equity or this left-wing idea

00:24:23.220 of representation and diversity in the most superficial sense above what is actually true,

00:24:31.920 above reality.

00:24:33.020 I mean, again, I see so many parallels, as you mentioned, to policing very often when

00:24:38.580 someone commits a heinous crime, like, for example, the Brooklyn shooter who had been on

00:24:44.080 the terrorist watch list until 2019.

00:24:47.320 It had many run-ins with the police, Sacramento shooters.

00:24:51.000 There was another mass shooter in Columbia.

00:24:54.140 They all share the same race, and they also share a long, violent criminal history. 1.00

00:25:00.800 The same thing with Daryl Brooks, the terrorist in the Waukesha parade.

00:25:05.720 And this is happening across the country, where in the name of equity, in the name of trying

00:25:11.100 to disrupt what they would call, I don't know, the school-to-prison pipeline and the disproportionate

00:25:17.960 rates of Black men in jail, rather than addressing why these Black men are going to jail, they're 0.95

00:25:24.400 just saying, well, let's just make sure that they're not in jail so our quotas can look right.

00:25:28.460 And as you mentioned, that is really harmful because it's not just that no one wants a

00:25:34.500 disproportionate rate of any kind of race in jail, but it's not just that Black men are 1.00

00:25:40.580 disproportionately committing these crimes. 0.97

00:25:42.220 They're also the disproportionate victims of these crimes.

00:25:44.980 And so if you actually care about saving Black lives, if Black lives really do matter, then 1.00

00:25:52.180 it shouldn't matter if a Vietnamese child is in front of you or if a Black child or Hispanic 1.00

00:25:56.820 child is in front of you.

00:25:58.080 You're exactly right.

00:25:59.340 You have to ask the question, is this child in danger?

00:26:02.440 And so often it seems like so-called social justice and criminal justice is really more

00:26:07.720 focused on protecting the perpetrator of the crime, the perpetrator of the violence.

00:26:14.540 And not the victims and the potential victims.

00:26:18.240 And besides just having a warped worldview and a warped upside down ideology, which I believe

00:26:24.380 progressivism is, it's hard for me to understand why.

00:26:27.980 And it's hard for me to understand a judge that you just described, who we know is not 0.95

00:26:31.340 stupid, why she wouldn't see things as they are. 0.84

00:26:35.880 It's very confusing to me. 1.00

00:26:37.140 What you have to.

00:26:37.860 Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because you're exactly right.

00:26:40.280 Just as the criminal justice system is focused on the perpetrators, so the child welfare system

00:26:44.900 is actually focused on the well-being of adults.

00:26:47.900 It's incredible.

00:26:48.920 I mean, I tell this to people over and over again, and they don't always quite believe

00:26:52.140 me.

00:26:52.720 But people see adults in the child welfare system as victims in many ways.

00:26:57.280 And in some ways, there's a good reason for that.

00:26:59.960 Many of these adults have had very difficult lives.

00:27:02.740 They have endured poverty, a lack of education, unemployment, substance abuse, homelessness.

00:27:09.740 Some of them have even grown up in the foster care system themselves.

00:27:13.240 And so when you look at these people and you think, I don't want to add to their problems

00:27:17.860 by taking away their children.

00:27:20.360 And so they come into this equation with a distinct advantage.

00:27:25.020 Adults are much more capable of articulating their views and their issues than children are.

00:27:31.220 And so they go into a courtroom or they talk to CPS or they talk to the social worker and

00:27:36.740 they say, you know, look at me, feel bad for me.

00:27:39.860 And it becomes harder and harder to focus on the well-being of the children.

00:27:44.380 Instead, you have more and more agencies and organizations out there that are simply focused

00:27:49.840 on what they call the well-being of the family.

00:27:53.080 It's interesting.

00:27:54.080 There's a program out there called CASA, Court Appointed Special Advocates, which I think

00:27:58.160 in principle is a great thing.

00:27:59.920 You have adult volunteers who come in, meet with a child who's in the child welfare system,

00:28:05.260 and then they come into the courtroom and they talk to the judge and they say, you know,

00:28:09.420 this is what I found out about this kid.

00:28:11.220 This is what I think is in this child's best interest.

00:28:14.380 Well, there's a move afoot in many CASA organizations across the country now to not be concerned with

00:28:19.900 the child's well-being, but to rather represent the whole family.

00:28:24.160 And it never occurs to these people or they never acknowledge that in there are cases where

00:28:30.060 the child's interests are going to diverge from the family's interests or the adult's interests.

00:28:35.800 And we don't have a, you know, we, in our court system, everyone gets their own representation.

00:28:41.040 And it's not, we don't have this system because we're mean.

00:28:44.240 We have this system because we feel that everyone in that courtroom deserves a voice.

00:28:49.200 And when you just say we're going to be concerned with family well-being, you blot out the child's

00:28:55.560 voice.

00:28:55.940 You start to ignore the child's voice and the child's best interests.

00:28:59.560 And I see this trend throughout the system and it's very concerning.

00:29:02.960 I think especially as conservatives, but as people in general, we do want family reunification

00:29:16.120 to be the goal.

00:29:18.640 I mean, you do insofar as that intact family will provide a stable or not perfect because

00:29:28.880 no family is perfect, but a better environment for that child than foster care, because there's

00:29:35.000 a lot of danger with foster care too.

00:29:36.780 I mean, there are known high rates of sexual abuse and physical abuse and perhaps psychological

00:29:43.960 abuse that happens in foster care.

00:29:46.340 And we know that there are a lot of problems there.

00:29:49.760 And so I want reunification to be the ultimate goal.

00:29:54.160 But what do you think are some steps that are not being taken right now that should be

00:29:59.440 taken to make sure that before reunification does happen, that CPS, that the child welfare

00:30:07.660 system is ensuring that reunification is best for the child, that the parent is in a position

00:30:14.520 to take care of that child again.

00:30:16.320 Because we don't want that parent in that family to be beyond redemption because they used

00:30:21.460 to be one way and they're no longer addicted to drugs and they really are on their feet.

00:30:25.360 Now, we do want reunification in that case.

00:30:28.240 Like, what do you think is the disconnect happening?

00:30:30.600 How can we change that so reunification can actually be good for the child as well? 0.69

00:30:37.240 So I think that one of the things we need to focus on is the timelines for kids, which is

00:30:43.800 to say, yes, we don't want to say anyone is beyond redemption or that they can never clean

00:30:51.460 up their act.

00:30:52.680 But we have to ask a very hard question in the child welfare world, which is how long

00:30:57.720 should a child have to wait?

00:30:59.940 And when a child is, you know, 10 or 12 years old and they have like a bond with their parent

00:31:06.260 and, you know, this parent was rendered, you know, for a couple of years or a year incapable

00:31:11.220 of caring for them and that child still has a strong relationship with that parent and

00:31:16.240 they can go back to them, you know, that's amazing.

00:31:19.240 When you have a child who is, say, born to a mother and that child is born substance exposed,

00:31:25.060 you know, that is already with drugs in their system. 0.98

00:31:27.880 And then that child goes home with a parent who has an addiction problem and month after

00:31:33.580 month and year after year, we keep saying to that parent, okay, come back for more services,

00:31:38.760 for more treatment, for another stint in rehab, you have to understand that child's timeline

00:31:44.680 is different from an adult's timeline.

00:31:46.680 When a judge says to that child, you know, come back and see me in six months and that

00:31:52.680 child is two or three years old, that is a huge chunk of a child's life and it is a

00:31:58.140 huge chunk of the important developmental years that we are frittering away with not just,

00:32:04.500 you know, bureaucracy, but even attempts to give the parents one more chance.

00:32:08.940 So as much as we have to have sympathy for the parents and provide whatever we can to

00:32:14.300 help them, we also have to say at some point, this has to stop and this child deserves to

00:32:20.660 be in a safe, loving, permanent home.

00:32:23.860 So the other aspect of what you were just asking about is what can we do to ensure that there

00:32:30.700 are more quality foster families out there? Because it's true. There are a lot of foster

00:32:36.160 families who are in this for the wrong reasons. I should say that the likelihood of being abused

00:32:41.700 in foster care is much lower than the likelihood in the general population. So I think as much as

00:32:48.660 those headlines catch our attention, because of course, the state has stepped in and put that

00:32:53.620 child in that situation, and we should absolutely be outraged by these situations. It's also important

00:32:59.440 to say that the vast majority of foster care situations are safe for kids. But still, we could

00:33:07.020 be doing much better. And part of the book is really an exploration of organizations, non-profit

00:33:13.200 organizations, and a lot of faith-based organizations out there, and churches that are doing amazing work

00:33:19.520 in this area that have really revolutionized the way that we recruit and train and support

00:33:25.880 foster families so that when a child does have to be removed, we have an appropriate, safe, and loving

00:33:32.600 placement for them.

00:33:34.020 And I want to talk to you a little bit more about that, because you've also written about

00:33:37.800 the efforts to undermine faith-based foster homes, group homes, and efforts to actually make children

00:33:45.500 secure. So I'll ask you about that in just one second. But I realized I kind of didn't finish my

00:33:50.500 thought earlier, and it's more on this kind of equity piece that we were just talking about.

00:33:55.640 When I was saying that typically, when you see someone who commits a violent crime, they have had

00:34:01.400 run-ins with the police, and they really should be in jail. These people shouldn't be on the street,

00:34:06.240 but because in the name of equity, they're released. And then we see the same thing in these

00:34:12.540 CPS situations that there were actually several times where the children should have been taken

00:34:19.720 away permanently. And then by the time that child is reunited the last time, it's too late.

00:34:26.300 One case that I'm reminded of is Melissa Lucio. She's actually on death row right now in Texas. 1.00

00:34:32.620 Her case is getting a lot of attention because of the Innocence Project, which my audience knows

00:34:36.940 is a big problem with how they do things. I think they're very deceitful and propagandistic.

00:34:43.060 In their relaying of the people's stories that they are advocating for. And this is one case that I

00:34:49.520 think is certainly indicative of that. She had had several interactions, 14 children. She had had

00:34:56.600 several interactions with CPS from the early 90s to the 2000s. In the early 2000s, CPS came 2004. They

00:35:04.500 came to her home. They found out that all of her children were neglected. None of her babies had any

00:35:09.100 diapers on. They were covered in dried feces. They looked like they had even maybe been physically

00:35:15.560 abused at times. The baby had ants crawling all over her. The baby tested positive for

00:35:21.580 cocaine. And so her children were taken away from her, I think rightfully so. But then the children

00:35:28.240 were reunited with her two years later, even though she was probably still on cocaine. Well, that little

00:35:34.360 infant who had been covered in ants at the beginning of her life was abused and then murdered

00:35:39.720 by her mother. And, you know, now she's dead. And she never really should have been reunified

00:35:47.520 with her children. She had a long history of neglect. But I don't know if it was in the name

00:35:52.440 of equity or what it was, CPS made the decision to give her back her children. And this is just one

00:35:58.340 of many examples. I mean, you can just search for these kinds of stories, not just in the U.S.,

00:36:04.400 but also in the U.K., where social services knew that this child was being abused. And then,

00:36:10.180 as you said, it's typically not a biological parent. It's typically a partner, a boyfriend,

00:36:15.860 you know, a live-in, whatever it is, someone who is not actually physically related to that child,

00:36:23.780 then going on to abuse them, despite other outside family members trying to sound the alarms

00:36:29.580 about these children. What else is the driving force besides just woke ideology and equity and social

00:36:39.700 justice? What else is driving CPS to reunify families at the expense of the safety of children?

00:36:49.540 So aside from the ideology of just reunification at all costs, which I think is really there,

00:36:55.160 and the racial aspect of it, I think what we don't understand is that a lot of the people making

00:37:00.960 these decisions are really not capable of making them. They're young, they're inexperienced,

00:37:06.760 they're not properly trained, they're not well compensated. Some child welfare agencies in

00:37:11.900 this country have a 40% turnover rate. And people don't understand what this job is when they get

00:37:18.280 into it. And they don't have enough training or information in order to make these life or death

00:37:25.500 decisions, frankly. Just kind of imagine yourself as like a, you know, 22-year-old recent college

00:37:32.600 graduate, you know, you're sent out to investigate some of these situations. You're being put in

00:37:38.880 physical danger often. You know, you're going into, say, a public housing project, you're knocking

00:37:43.540 on the door, you don't know who is on the other side, you are going to ask some very difficult

00:37:48.860 questions of the people inside that apartment. You have to worry about whether you're going to be

00:37:54.600 threatened. And at the same time, you have to be taking in all this information about what is going

00:37:59.340 on in the apartment, trying to assess what the kids would tell you if you could get them alone for a

00:38:05.140 minute. It's really hard work. And I don't think these people know how to do it. Now, when you think

00:38:12.240 about that work, the way I've described it, it sounds to you like this is the work that police do,

00:38:17.960 that we ask them to do every day. But we don't treat CPS the way we treat law enforcement in a lot of

00:38:25.360 ways. And we don't train them the way we train law enforcement to do these kinds of investigations. And we

00:38:31.320 also see them as kind of optional, like you saw during the pandemic, actually, quite a number of states

00:38:39.140 actually furloughed CPS workers, or told them that they could do their jobs over zoom, or that they could

00:38:45.780 just pull up in front of the house and say, hey, show me the kid, I'll stand over here. And I'll see if like, I

00:38:52.140 think anything is going wrong. It is, it's, it's outrageous what happened during the pandemic, a lot

00:38:58.180 of kids were being abused more because of the, you know, remote situation. Many more families were

00:39:04.840 isolated, they weren't being seen by teachers or doctors or neighbors. And our attitude with CPS was,

00:39:10.920 well, you know, we'll get back to that work when the pandemic is over. So I think part of it is,

00:39:16.140 again, we saw child abuse rates go up. I mean, obviously, the nurses and doctors who didn't take a break

00:39:21.560 during the pandemic, they attested to the fact that they saw some of the worst cases of not just

00:39:26.780 child abuse, but also just mental health deterioration among really young kids, suicidal

00:39:31.840 attempts among five year olds. And so we're talking about a whole range of abuse that increased during

00:39:38.620 the pandemic, in part, in large part, because of what you're talking about, because all of the little

00:39:43.560 accountability structures that we have, whether it's school, you've got teachers who are mandatory

00:39:48.660 reporters when they see when they're suspicious of abuse, and then doctors, social workers, all of

00:39:54.820 that that was taken away from kids and the people who said that they were caring for the most vulnerable

00:39:59.860 were the pro lockdown people. And once again, I don't know why, even though kids are the most

00:40:06.220 marginalized and the most vulnerable and the most subject to abuse class in the entire world,

00:40:11.660 they are very rarely considered by the social justice, empathy warriors to be in a truly oppressed

00:40:19.820 class that we need to advocate for. It's very strange. Yeah, the slogan safer at home is a joke for

00:40:26.600 these kids. I mean, it was just, you know, and like I said, you have the mandated reporters, but you also

00:40:31.780 have kids who just weren't even seen by their neighbors. I mean, once you tell everyone, you just lock your

00:40:37.440 doors and stay at home. I mean, families that already had substance abuse issues, those were

00:40:42.740 increased, and they didn't have any outlet for getting counseling for helping with that. And what

00:40:49.120 you saw, I mean, one national study found that you saw three times as many severe abuse cases coming to

00:40:55.360 our emergency rooms. I mean, because what you know, in under normal circumstances, you might have like a

00:41:01.200 progression, you know, things that start out more minor, once they get to the emergency room, those are

00:41:06.920 severe abuse cases. And by that point, for many kids, it's almost too late. So to answer your

00:41:14.340 question about, you know, why it is that we are making these decisions, and it's true, if you look

00:41:18.760 at the statistics on fatalities and near fatalities, you know, in some states, two thirds of these kids

00:41:25.280 have already either already been in the system, and maybe their case was already dismissed. Many of

00:41:30.640 them have open cases, and we know what's going on in these homes, and we are failing to act.

00:41:35.740 There are, I think, some things that we could do better in terms of information. You know, many

00:41:41.860 industries have been transformed by the use of big data. And I talk in my book about using some of the

00:41:48.420 information we have on these families to make better decisions. So for instance, we might know if a child

00:41:54.760 hasn't shown up to school in the last 30 days, if a family hasn't picked up their food stamps or used

00:42:00.920 them. If someone who was recently incarcerated has listed that family's address as their new residence,

00:42:09.660 these are signs that when they're kind of plugged into a computer, you know, alert us not definitely

00:42:15.680 abuse happened or definitely abuse didn't happen. But they tell us who needs to be most urgently

00:42:21.480 investigated and which kids need to be seen very soon. And I think that a lot of states could be

00:42:27.360 making much better use of those tools to give some aid to these people who are we're asking to do

00:42:33.800 these jobs. And, you know, one sociologist I talked to said to me, these decisions that are being made,

00:42:39.540 they're no better than the flip of a coin.

00:42:41.120 I think conservatives are rightly hesitant to trust CPS when we think about, I think especially

00:42:54.640 over the last two years, our distrust of the government has really grown. And we have seen

00:42:59.440 how government and government agencies are really weaponized against certain perspectives. And there

00:43:05.640 really is an animosity towards things like homeschooling or parents who choose an alternate

00:43:10.740 vaccine schedule. And so I think especially with COVID and the restrictions surrounding that, a lot

00:43:16.180 of parents are worried that CPS is going to come after them simply because of their worldview, because

00:43:23.740 of their politics, because they're deciding to raise their child with maybe a religious or political

00:43:29.640 perspective that the government doesn't agree with.

00:43:33.020 And I think that there's maybe a healthy fear there. I don't think that that is what is happening

00:43:37.760 necessarily right now. Although we are seeing in places like Canada, parents who refuse to call a

00:43:43.660 child by a different pronoun or go along with the child's transition, those parents are under attack

00:43:50.860 by the government. So I think it's okay for us to have a healthy fear like any bureaucracy, things can get

00:43:57.080 out of control, things can be weaponized against people because of their beliefs. And so I want

00:44:05.100 people to understand that what we're talking about is having a healthy safety net and hedge of protection

00:44:11.840 for children who really need it. And the ideology and just I guess the common practice right now of CPS is

00:44:20.300 actually putting kids at risk in the name of creating, you know, a safer and more equitable

00:44:26.300 world. And one of the ways that they are doing that, one of the ways that they are undermining their

00:44:31.320 stated mission is by undermining the efforts of faith based organizations who are trying to help

00:44:40.040 kids in the child welfare system. So can you talk more about what is going on there and why?

00:44:45.980 Sure. So I think you're exactly right about the healthy skepticism that conservatives have here.

00:44:53.180 You know, there are definitely cases in which child welfare agencies are trying to sort of do

00:44:59.400 social engineering, like they don't want foster parents. In California, it's hard to be a foster

00:45:05.220 parent unless you agree to support your foster child's gender transition. So there are absolutely big

00:45:12.380 problems with the system. But what worries me is that conservatives have very much taken a hands-off

00:45:18.760 approach to child welfare for a long time now. They have conservative legislators and governors have

00:45:26.440 sort of allowed child welfare agencies to kind of operate on their own. And they are completely

00:45:33.680 populated by a certain kind of person with a certain kind of ideology. And that is not helpful.

00:45:40.900 Conservatives need to be at the table for discussions about child welfare policy. Sometimes when I talk

00:45:47.040 to legislators, I get the sense that they don't want to be at the table because they don't want to

00:45:52.080 be called racist and they don't want to be called cheap for not giving more money to child welfare. So

00:45:57.380 they just stay away. But what happens is then you create a vacuum and that vacuum is filled by people

00:46:03.740 who want to, as you say, weaponize the child welfare system. So we need to be at the table. And one of the

00:46:09.520 ways that conservatives and I think people of faith in particular have been at the table and have been

00:46:15.860 showing up for these kids in the last number of years is through these faith-based foster agencies

00:46:21.920 and programs that recruit and train and support foster and adoptive families. So I just want to kind of

00:46:28.140 give a little bit of a sense of how they have really transformed this area before I talk about kind of the

00:46:34.440 ways that I think people are trying to push them out of it. The first thing that they recognized is

00:46:39.660 that our recruitment of foster parents is just, it was terrible. Putting up a picture of a child on the

00:46:45.720 nightly news and saying, does anyone want this kid, is not a good way to find foster parents. But foster

00:46:51.440 parents were calling agencies and they weren't even getting their calls returned. So a lot of these

00:46:56.520 agencies and churches, megachurches, particularly in the Midwest and the South, said, okay, well,

00:47:00.980 how can we help? We will act as kind of the go-between and we will have pastors actually go

00:47:07.320 and say to people, these are the six kids in our zip code tonight who need homes. That is a very

00:47:12.680 urgent and important message and people really took them up on it. A lot of these agencies also

00:47:17.560 volunteered to do training. You know, the state says, oh, you need to know things like how many fire

00:47:23.100 extinguishers to have in your home. And these agencies says, fine, we'll tell them how many fire

00:47:27.820 extinguishers they need to have, but we're also going to teach them how to handle kids who have

00:47:31.860 been traumatized. That is a much more important skill in many ways than handling a fire extinguisher.

00:47:38.600 And the last thing they did is they supported foster families. About half of foster parents quit within

00:47:43.720 the first year. And one of the reasons is because they're not supported. They feel like they're in

00:47:48.300 this by themselves. And so a lot of these groups now sort of say, you have to bring other people with

00:47:54.480 you, your neighbors and friends who will volunteer to do respite care, to help you build furniture at

00:48:00.480 the last minute, or just to pray for you during these times, which are going to be really trying.

00:48:05.880 So this has been a hugely successful effort in terms of recruiting middle class American families

00:48:13.060 of faith into these efforts. But now you have these activists in state and federal governments,

00:48:18.440 you know, who are saying, well, if these agencies are not placing kids with gay families in particular,

00:48:25.740 then we want to run them out of business. And you actually had a Supreme Court case last last year,

00:48:31.740 where Catholic Charities was fighting the city of Philadelphia, the city said, we don't want you

00:48:36.880 helping these kids anymore. As if you know, there's some excess of people to help these kids.

00:48:42.440 Um, and, and Catholic Charities won. But it's amazing, because despite the fact that they won,

00:48:48.000 we're almost a year out of that decision. And there are still people all over this country who

00:48:52.780 are trying to sue these organizations out of existence.

00:48:56.580 Mm hmm. And once again, this goes back to what you were saying is that, um, it'll at least the

00:49:03.380 progressive side of this system and many systems in the US is really thinking about the wants,

00:49:12.280 not even the needs, but the wants of adults, not the needs of children. What is going to make

00:49:17.940 adults feel better? What is going to be less likely to hurt a gay couple's feelings? Uh, not,

00:49:25.800 well, what is in the best interest of children? And wow, we could get into so many things that I know

00:49:30.280 is not the point of your book, like the whole reproductive and fertility industry that also does

00:49:36.420 the same thing, sacrificing a child's well-being at the expense of whatever adults want.

00:49:42.040 And it's basically this giant social experiment. We like to say that children are always the

00:49:47.040 unconsenting subjects of progressive social experiments, and really always have been dating

00:49:51.840 back to almost the beginning of humanity. There's always been a form of child sacrifice. There's always

00:49:58.040 been, um, a form of exploiting children because they always have been physically and mentally, um,

00:50:07.240 defenseless. And then there's also, there's also this, um, a part of this, this undermining of a

00:50:13.820 child's wellbeing, going back to the equity conversation, that there is a push among these

00:50:19.220 activists going all the way back to Malcolm X, maybe before to not place black children with white 0.63

00:50:26.100 parents. Is that something that is pretty pervasive and is preventing black children from

00:50:31.580 having safe homes? It is shockingly pervasive. Um, we actually have a federal law in the book 0.75

00:50:38.780 called the multi-ethnic placement act, which was passed in the 1990s by a bar bipartisan group in

00:50:44.220 Congress that says you may not discriminate when it comes to placing a child for foster care or

00:50:50.720 adoption. And that law is routinely flouted. It is amazing. You hear judges openly talking about

00:50:57.700 race matching in court. Um, you hear social workers talking about it in front of parents and a lot of

00:51:04.360 foster parents, unfortunately, and adoptive parents are not aware of the laws on the books. And so they

00:51:09.420 don't understand, you know, how to press their, um, you know, the, the best interest of the child here,

00:51:15.360 according to the law. Um, and, and what's amazing is that since that law was passed,

00:51:20.820 tens of thousands more black children have been able to find homes, but groups like the National

00:51:26.360 Association of Black Social Workers basically say that they would rather have kids in group homes or

00:51:32.680 just remain in foster care indefinitely rather than be placed with a family of a different race.

00:51:38.420 Or probably just remain with the, their biological family who is mistreating them. I would guess that

00:51:45.440 that is also their preference to going with a safe home of someone of a different race.

00:51:50.420 Yes, that's absolutely true. And, and I should say, because I think a lot of people are very nervous

00:51:54.440 about this topic. They feel like, well, wouldn't it be better? Wouldn't we could have more cultural

00:51:58.700 sensitivity? They'd be able to talk to their kids more about Trayvon Martin or whatever. I mean,

00:52:03.620 if you look at the longitudinal studies on adoption, there is absolutely no difference in the outcomes

00:52:11.180 for black children who have been adopted by black families and black children who have adopted by

00:52:16.320 white families, no difference in educational outcomes, income outcomes, even things like self-esteem.

00:52:21.840 And there is no acknowledgement that what these kids need, no matter what their skin color is a safe,

00:52:28.340 loving, permanent home, because these racial activists are so concerned with skin color and

00:52:33.760 race matching. And what seems to really be the differentiating factor in these families, white or

00:52:42.460 black or whatever their racial background is, versus families who are not adopting is actually the faith

00:52:48.780 aspect. I mean, Christians, particularly evangelical Christians, people of all faiths, of course,

00:52:53.580 adopt and become foster parents. But there is a disproportionately high number of evangelical

00:53:00.340 Christians, black and white, who adopt. And so really, it looks like that is probably one of the deciding 0.94

00:53:09.140 factors in the well-being of children who end up in these homes, not the racial makeup of the family.

00:53:15.940 Are you going into a secure home, a loving home? But also, are you going into a home that has values,

00:53:22.460 that sees you as someone who is valuable and is worth loving, who can model unconditional love to

00:53:28.240 you? And a lot of people get that from Scripture and from their faith community. And so it's tragic to me,

00:53:36.520 it's tragic to me that those efforts are being undermined, both in the name of, you know,

00:53:42.180 I don't know, anti-homophobia, but also anti-racism. Again, the sacrifice that's being made as a child's

00:53:50.660 well-being.

00:53:51.800 Yeah, absolutely. The faith is so important. And it really plays in two particular ways. One is,

00:53:57.340 as you say, guiding families, the values that they're raising children with, the feeling that

00:54:03.500 they're being called to do this very hard thing. It's really important to say, you know,

00:54:08.540 a lot of ordinary people, if you ask them, like, would you take a stranger's child into your home

00:54:13.200 and raise them as your own? A lot of people would say, that's just too hard. Nobody is asking me to

00:54:18.440 do that. But a lot of the evangelical Christians I meet say, God has asked me to do this. I feel this

00:54:24.020 calling. And the other thing is a little bit of what I was mentioning before, which is when they are

00:54:29.000 part of that church, they get the support that they need from their community to do this work.

00:54:34.420 It is really hard to be a foster parent in a vacuum. It's not enough to just say, like,

00:54:39.820 I have nice neighbors. Because when push comes to shove, you need people who are really going to

00:54:44.700 step up and do some hard work with you. And the church communities, they're not the only group

00:54:50.580 that's ever going to do that. But they are the group that seems to be most reliably doing it.

00:54:55.540 Yeah, I agree with you. But it seems like just like everything else, the efforts that are

00:55:01.100 coming in a form progressives don't like are, they're just kind of pushed to the side and

00:55:07.600 they're undermined. And it doesn't matter what the outcomes are. Again, it's the same thing with

00:55:11.680 abolishing the police. It doesn't matter that violent crime is up everywhere, that homicides

00:55:17.280 are up everywhere, especially in the cities that have taken funds away from the police. It doesn't

00:55:21.920 matter that disproportionately the victims of these crimes and the perpetrators of these crimes are 0.93

00:55:26.940 black Americans, the very people, these same, these same left wing activists say that they care about

00:55:32.920 it with progressivism, it is always the intention, not the conclusion of their policy. So if their

00:55:40.780 intention is so called inclusion, or empathy, or diversity, or equity, it really doesn't matter if

00:55:49.780 the conclusion of those policies is catastrophic, if it actually harms the very people they set out

00:55:55.560 to protect. It's almost, in my opinion, every progressive policy is like that. But it's

00:56:00.740 particularly devastating when you're talking about children. Can you talk a little bit more just about

00:56:06.640 what changes specifically you would like to see? Like if you could describe your ideal child welfare

00:56:12.600 system that really takes care of children and families, what would that look like?

00:56:18.540 So I think, you know, child protective services, I think we would get better, well-trained people to be

00:56:24.900 doing this work. I think we would be using data to better understand which kids are most at risk.

00:56:30.120 I think family courts would be transformed into courts that are actually following the laws that

00:56:36.700 are on the books, both in terms of the timelines, ensuring that kids are not languishing in foster

00:56:41.580 care forever, ensuring that we're not making decisions based on their race. I think we probably

00:56:46.580 need a lot more judges. I think we need a lot more oversight of family court. Family court decisions

00:56:51.900 are very rarely appealed because people don't really understand what the law is. And there are

00:56:58.280 endless delays in these courts, which are just putting kids' lives on hold. I think we need to do

00:57:03.040 a better job of replicating the models that these faith-based organizations are engaged in to make sure

00:57:10.480 that everywhere in the country there are high-quality, well-trained foster parents who could take in these

00:57:17.360 kids if they need homes. We should have a surplus of these families. We should be ensuring that when

00:57:24.520 a child enters the system, there are a bunch of places that are options for that child. You know,

00:57:30.480 because right now you might have one child enter the system and there might be one open foster bed.

00:57:36.040 That family might not be prepared to take in a teenager or a baby, and it doesn't matter. They're just going

00:57:41.120 to shove you into that system because that's the only place they have left. You know, in a couple of

00:57:47.020 states now, over the summer, for instance, you had in Texas, 400 kids were sleeping in offices because

00:57:53.040 we don't have appropriate places for them. We have stopped recruiting foster families. We have stopped

00:57:58.880 funding congregate care, even for kids with serious mental health and behavioral health needs.

00:58:05.500 We are not thinking about what these kids need. All we're thinking about is what the adults want. So

00:58:11.420 ultimately, I think we need to reorient the child welfare system around the best interests of children.

00:58:21.540 Wow, you've given me a lot to think about. And honestly, I feel more sure to get involved in it. And

00:58:27.620 my kind of preconceived notion or impression of what I've seen on social media is CPS kind of being

00:58:33.680 exclusively heavy handed and the taking away of children has really been challenged by what I

00:58:39.060 read in your book and, and what you said today. And it made me realize something that I already

00:58:43.640 knew is that so many of the cases of child murder that we see of child abuse that we see is at the

00:58:49.160 hands of people who have already been investigated by the police or CPS social services many times and

00:58:55.040 those children are reunified with really no logical reasoning beyond, well, we want to reunify a

00:59:03.560 family that can't be the highest goal that can't be the only goal, the, the, the main goal has to be

00:59:11.560 the well being of the child. But we also have to define well being in very clear terms. Because again,

00:59:18.280 that can be weaponized. If this is a progressive bureaucracy, and they see well being as transitioning

00:59:24.360 a child's gender, or being indoctrinated in a certain ideology, or being forced to go to public

00:59:29.580 school, rather than homeschooled, well, that can definitely be weaponized, but the answer for

00:59:36.080 conservatives, and this is why this is also a really, like, precarious issue, because I could

00:59:42.460 actually see the left and the right uniting on this move to abolish CPS, or to like take power away

00:59:49.660 from CPS, and maybe in some ways, you know, for good reason, the suspicion, at least. But I think

00:59:56.480 we have to be more thoughtful, as you said about that, that just like so many parts of the government,

01:00:01.280 it may not be in itself bad, it may actually be very useful. And so abolition is not the answer,

01:00:10.380 but thoughtfulness is the answer, which means, as you said, conservative politicians have to be

01:00:14.640 involved. There is a very prominent conservative in our area who is on the board of CPS, which I'm so

01:00:21.360 thankful for, like, I feel very comforted knowing that she's there. But the rest of us have to stop

01:00:26.500 just seeing CPS in the same way that a lot of people see public education as exclusively something

01:00:32.720 to demonize, and something that we actually need to infuse goodness into. And, you know, we like to say

01:00:39.140 raise a respectful ruckus about and really get involved in ourselves. Do you have any more tips

01:00:44.420 for people who are realizing, wow, okay, I need to know more about this and get involved in it and

01:00:49.040 realize maybe there are steps that we can take just as average people to make this thing better for kids?

01:00:55.480 Yeah. So I think that, you know, one of the areas that I really am concerned about, like I said,

01:01:01.060 is family court. And although there are some CASA organizations that are going a little crazy,

01:01:06.000 I think a lot of CASA organizations are great opportunity for people to get a good view of

01:01:11.140 what's going on in the system, to understand whether these children's interests are being

01:01:16.380 properly represented. A lot of the and the other thing is that I want more eyes on what's going on

01:01:23.560 in the system. I want, you know, ordinary, you know, middle class, you know, educated people to go

01:01:30.320 into these courtrooms and look around and say, is this the court that I think we should have in this

01:01:35.600 community? Are they following the law? Is this like a kangaroo court or something? Or what's going

01:01:41.060 on here? So just getting involved in that way. Also, I should say that a lot of these faith-based

01:01:45.840 organizations, when I say that they're doing foster care, they have also acknowledged that not everyone

01:01:51.120 is going to take a child into their home and foster them. But there are all sorts of other ways that

01:01:56.840 you could help foster kids, even if you are not personally responsible for one. Supporting foster

01:02:03.040 families, making your church or your community more foster friendly, so that that child feels like

01:02:09.540 they are welcome, not just by that individual family, but by the whole community. Understanding

01:02:15.400 what it's going to be like if your neighbor takes in a traumatized child, what that child might behave

01:02:20.680 like, offering to babysit that child if that couple needs to, you know, go out to dinner one night to get

01:02:26.700 a break. So there are, I think, all sorts of ways that we can kind of get involved. There's another

01:02:32.160 organization that actually tries to match the needs of kids going into foster care with church

01:02:39.840 communities. So one thing that a lot of child welfare workers waste time doing, or not waste time, but

01:02:45.100 you know, they often are the ones who have to go to Walmart to pick out clothes or to pick up a car

01:02:50.700 seat or something like that. There are groups that now say, like, if you put this need online,

01:02:56.860 we have whole communities that could probably fill that need instantly, because so many of our families

01:03:02.140 have these things just sitting in their basements or their kitchens. So I think that there's a lot we

01:03:07.440 can do both to fulfill the needs of these kids literally, but also to make sure that these systems are

01:03:13.840 operating in a way that we would want them to operate if our kids were in them.

01:03:18.280 Yes, absolutely. And do you happen to know the names of a couple of those organizations that

01:03:23.780 people can look up off the top of your head? If not, it's okay. We can include links in the

01:03:28.880 description if you can send to us later. But if you know some of them, would you mind listing them?

01:03:33.400 Yeah. So one of my favorite organizations is called Project 127. It's based in Colorado,

01:03:38.700 and it does a lot of great work in terms of recruiting and training and supporting foster families.

01:03:44.800 There are a few interesting organizations that are in Arkansas that I've written about.

01:03:50.740 One is called Immerse. One is called The Call, which recruits foster families. And they also have

01:03:58.360 programs for youth who are transitioning out of care. One of the biggest problems many people know

01:04:03.940 about in the foster care system is kids aging out with any kind of family connection. And so in Little

01:04:10.580 Rock, there are these programs where kids are, they help kids find housing, education,

01:04:18.280 a place to do laundry, take driver's license exams, all sorts of things that we don't think about with

01:04:25.100 our own kids when they reach that age, because we've trained them to do all these things and we

01:04:28.980 navigate these systems for them. But older kids in foster care don't have those people. So I'd recommend

01:04:35.040 them too. And I'm just curious, I wonder what local churches are doing. Lots of churches have lots of

01:04:40.480 different programs. Not every church can do every single kind of ministry, but maybe that's something

01:04:46.420 that we can think about, that the audience can think about. Certainly that I'm thinking about is

01:04:51.080 what can my local church do in our own small but significant way to help these kids who are

01:04:56.720 transitioning out or to get our families involved in child advocacy and foster care and some of the

01:05:02.820 organizations. Everyone can do something. Not everyone can do everything. That's not what

01:05:09.120 we're called to, but everyone can do something. And gosh, if we care about the most vulnerable in our

01:05:14.640 society, if we truly care about the voiceless, we've got to care about children. And it just, gosh,

01:05:21.560 it just goes to show we could have a whole other 30 minutes talking about the dangers of this ideology.

01:05:26.400 But when you see the world through the lens of this kind of critical race theory, progressive

01:05:34.980 lens, when you see it through that of white, evil, black, oppressed, and you view the world and every 0.98

01:05:46.780 system and the idea of right and wrong through that lens, you actually end up hurting people. 0.77

01:05:52.140 When you think that the biggest threat to people is white supremacist evangelicalism,

01:05:58.280 you are failing to see things as they are. You are failing to see all the different forms of

01:06:03.240 oppression that come in all different kinds of colors and socioeconomic backgrounds. And then you

01:06:08.120 are failing to actually help victims. As you said poignantly a few minutes ago, the question should

01:06:13.260 always be not just for the judge, but also for us, for politicians, for average people is,

01:06:17.520 is this child in danger? That is the question that we have to ask. And you've asked that and

01:06:22.720 answered that really well in your book. How can people find you and support you?

01:06:27.780 So I work at the American Enterprise Institute and I have a webpage there, AEI.org. They can order my

01:06:34.280 book on Amazon, of course, and reach out to me through the AEI page. I'm happy to connect with people

01:06:39.820 who are interested in getting more involved in this world. We have some videos up that kind of

01:06:45.520 demonstrate some of the problems in the system that I'd love for people to share. And get involved

01:06:52.440 in any way that you think is appropriate for you. Because there are so many kids out there who are

01:06:59.420 in need of adults, not only direct mentorship and help, but also adults who are willing to get their

01:07:07.920 hands dirty and be at the table to influence these important policy decisions.

01:07:13.320 Thank you so much. This was very informative and I know people are going to learn a lot. So I

01:07:18.280 appreciate you taking the time to talk to us.

01:07:20.240 Thank you. I appreciate it.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - April 20, 2022

Ep 603 ｜ How CPS & Foster Care Corruption is Killing Kids ｜ Guest： Naomi Schaefer Riley

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