Dealing w/ 'failed families'

[LuckyTheDog]

Please don't turn this into a flame fest, OK? I openly admit that I have not worked this out entirely. But I think I am on to something here. I want some dialog to determine whether this approach is worth developing more or just a bad idea. Here goes:

Just as the international community has to deal with “failed states,” American society is faced with a lot of “failed families” – that is, families that are simply not financially viable and which do not give kids a fair start in life. Single women head lots of these families, though not all. What to do?

Well, we could slide the women $200 or so per month per kid, provide a cheap apartment in a bad neighborhood and subsidize the grocery shopping (food stamps) and medical care (Medicade). That keeps the kids alive and fed, but provides nothing that would help the family succeed. So, if you do that, you’d better be prepared to keep the checks coming for a long time.

Providing a time limit on benefits like that could reduce the welfare roles. And it could even motivate some of the families to find other solutions to their problems. But we might now always like the “solutions” they find (can you say “crack house” or “prostitution”?).

There has to be a better way. And I think there is something to be said for providing MORE help for shorter periods and focusing our efforts on the welfare of the kids. Mainly, this means figuring out how to remove barriers and excuses from the lives of the parents and being prepared, at some point, to remove the children from their care.

Imagine a system in which 24-hour childcare centers are established in economically depressed areas. As a parent, the state gives you 9 hours of care for your kids every day, when you need it. Need to work nights? The centers watch them at night. Working fulltime and going to school in the evening? Then the center will watch them for 12 hours on days in which you go to class. And, oh, by the way, the community college tuition is on us. And if you need housing assistance and food stamps, we’ll get that for you as well.

But there is a catch.

If, after a reasonable amount of time (three or four years), you are not able to care for the kids without help --and by that, I mean provide for their very basic needs -- the kids are removed from your home. They are sent either to foster care or to special boarding schools set up by the state -- which will give them structure, education, good nutrition and the care of people who will treat them well. You can see the kids. You will be encouraged to stay in their lives. But the kids will not live with you anymore.

Like I said, I have not really worked this all out. But I think I am on the right track here. Comments?

[Democrats_win]

1. Right problem. Solution? Recall 24 hr basketball in the 90s.

It was proposed and in some places carried out. conservatives had a fit. I mean a real fit over this. they don't care about people. Truly, you are on to something here but first we must change the attitudes of people in this country to care more about people and less about rich people and corporations.

[Lars39]

2. Have you ever talked with someone whose parents had to give

them up to an orphanage because they could not raise them? It's heartbreaking from all sides.

[LuckyTheDog]

4. Of course it's heartbreaking

But the idea here is that we can't just keep losing generations. We have to put the kids first -- their welfare needs to trump even parental rights. But, that said, we should be prepared to do absolutely everything we can for the parents before we do anything that drastic. The goal needs to be to preserve the family and make it viable.

We're not talking here about removing kids whose parents buy clothes at Salvation Army and feed them beans for dinner. But there are homes in which little kids are left alone because mom has to work and who don't get any dinner at all.

[Lars39]

6. Breaking up a family for monetary reasons is callous.

Better to do everything to strenghten the family while it is intact.

[LuckyTheDog]

9. That's what I proposed

But what do you do in cases where that fails? Should those kids be written off entirely?

[Lars39]

15. The families should not be written off so quickly.

If we're serious about helping the children and parents overcome possibly generational poverty it could take a full generation to do it.

[LuckyTheDog]

18. Hmmm...

Could be. That's worth thinking on.

The one idea here that I think is bullet-proof is offering free access to community colleges. The rest... well... better than doing nothing is all I will claim.

[eyesroll]

3. This is punitive to children.

If you can't get a good job, they get taken out of their home and away from their parents?

Do you really think most people on welfare would be off welfare if they just had the right kick in the pants?

I know one little girl whose mom makes $8 per hour -- with a masters' degree. The jobs just aren't there in her area. More schooling will not help. She's likely eligible for child-care assistance. That little girl would be absolutely crushed if she was taken away from her mom, who is doing the best she can.

[JackintheGreen]

5. But taking the kids away?

Hasn't this been done before, say in China after the cultural revolution, where children of undesirable parents were farmed out of the urban centers and into villages where they could be raised with the appropriate proletarian values? It just feels UGLY.

But if we do, then no foster care. Instead they should be placed with "family values" republicans, because only they truly care about the welfare of children. :sarcasm:

[LuckyTheDog]

7. This would be far different

It would be done in extreme cases. Plus, the kids and parents would remain in contact. They could have very liberal visitation rights to each other.

[noonwitch]

8. There needs to be more of a community approach

One of my jewish coworkers lived on a kibbutz in Israel for a couple of years after she graduated from college. Their approach really worked for building a new country, settling immigrants from all over, and starting an agricultural system.

In a lot of communities that have rampant poverty (like my own-Detroit)no longer have a strong economic base, and have neighborhoods full of crumbling, lead-paint infested houses. A new approach is needed-I'm not saying copy the kibbutz model completely, I'm saying look at what features of it could work here in rebuilding old and decaying communities. But if there was some kind of neighborhood business, education and housing program that found a way to rebuild neighborhoods and empower the people in them economically, with a community approach to each issue, maybe something more innovative would work.

I've always said that what Detroit needs is to find a way to make something that everyone in the world wants to buy, again. It may be that they need to find 50 different things that everyone wants to buy.

[LuckyTheDog]

10. I like that

It's really very much what I have in mind, too.

[proud2BlibKansan]

11. I like it all except the punishment part

You could put a time limit on eligibility, but taking the kids away is rather punitive and extreme. Other than that, it is a great idea.

[LuckyTheDog]

13. Not meant as a punishment

The idea would be not really to punish anyone. The idea has to be to provide structure and security the kids need in order to thrive. But, like I said, I have not worked all of this out. I came to the "catch" part after asking my self: "What if we provide all this help and it doesn't work or the parents don't act in good faith? What should we do about the kids?"

But, you are right in that this would be seen as punitive to the parents, depending on how it is handled.

[proud2BlibKansan]

20. I was thinking about the kids, not the parents

It isn't fair to punish them for something their parents do.

[LuckyTheDog]

21. yep

And that is one reason I don't claim to have "found the answer" in any way. But what do we do if parents really, really can't care for their children and all attempts to help them fail? The idea that the parents should stay in the lives of the kids (except in cases of abuse or neglect) should be non-negotiable, for sure.

Someone here mentioned the idea of setting up kibbutz-style living situations so that the parents could support each other. I like that idea.

[Asgaya Dihi]

12. Failed families and single mother households have causes

Rather than looking just at the symptoms and trying to treat them we should get behind them and look for some causes. Do you think the fact that one young black man in eight between the ages of 25 and 29 is behind bars as we speak might be a part of that, and of the poverty, gangs, and other problems we see? Look this over and consider what the real world impact of it is. www.prisonsucks.com

We need solutions, not band-aids. We can stop causing them ourselves, big first step toward a solution right there.

[LuckyTheDog]

17. Hey I agree

But if providing free childcare, free education and other help would be just a "band-aide", then what would be a solution?

Seriously, I am all ears here. I just get SO frustrated when I see so many kids getting a rotten start in life. I think we have to be willing to do radical things. My ideas here might not be the best ones. I know there are pitfalls here to say the least. But doing nothing is not an option, either.

[Asgaya Dihi]

24. I agree

Taking the kids we can take off the table right away. It's not a solution when there hasn't already been abuse. It's been a long time since I was angry or violent, but if someone took mine as a "contraceptive" measure they'd never live to see their own grow up. What do we expect to breed with that other than hatred? Wait till they've done something, then punish.

Yes, the stuff you're into is a part of the solution, but in my mind the smallest part. I spent four and a half years locked up as a kid, and for guess what? I skipped school to avoid being forced into a gang, fought them for weeks with no problem then after a couple of weeks they said they liked the guts and asked me to join. Given the choice between pissing them off and asking for worse myself or doing it to others neither made sense, so I stopped going to school. I started a 10 year old kid that would rather risk trouble than hurt others, never occurred to me I could do more time for saying no than I might have if I'd stabbed someone. Declared me uncontrollable and my life as I knew it was over.

I came out mean, and I did some damage. Took a few years but I finally remembered who I used to be with the help of the lady I finally married. The system is growing out of control, 686 inmates per 100k in 2002, 702 in 2003, and 724 in 2004. It's a for profit enterprise and they are writing laws.

I'm not black, but I did live in a poor neighborhood so got a taste myself of how they get treated. I pointed out the numbers above for one in eight between 25 and 29 behind bars, here's another angle on it. Now consider this quote. "Mandatory sentencing laws disproportionately affect people of color. African-Americans make up 15% of the country’s drug users, yet they make up 37% of those arrested for drug violations, 59% of those convicted, and 74% of those sentenced to prison for a drug offense." http://www.idpi.us/resources/factsheets/mm_factsheet.htm

We breed poverty, we breed crime, and we breed single mother families and poor education. We don't allow anything else because it's good business. If you want to know what I mean by it's good business, take an hour of your time and listen to the following. If you want to talk past that I'll be there, drop me a note in mail if you'd like. We're fighting symptoms, but aren't even looking at causes. http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/corrections/index.html

[coalition_unwilling]

14. "special boarding schools set up by the state" -- that smells

like 19th-century "orphanages" to me. Those places were rife with injustice and cruelty as is the current juvenile justice system (at least in the state of California).

I would argue instead for a massive expansion of the "foster care" system coupled with intensive monitoring by state departments of child and family services. Although the foster care system also has serious problems (not least child abuse and neglect), most parents serving as foster parents are doing a decent job.

I think a "demand-side" approach would put something like George McGovern's 1972 idea for a Guaranteed Annual Income (aka "negative income tax") into play on a much wider scale than the current Earned Income Credit. If children received the same level of financial support as seniors (via Social Security program), you would see dramatic gains across the board. Of course, the scattered abuses of such a system would enable quasi-Reagans to make spurious arguments about "welfare queens in their welfare Cadillacs."

[LuckyTheDog]

22. Good ideas

I especially like the "nagative income tax" idea.

[proud patriot]

16. I think breaking up families for this reason is a BAD idea

The only 2 good reasons for breaking families up are
abuse and neglect . Working to get those families back
together should be a goal , with education and training .

The rest sounds good though.

[LuckyTheDog]

19. I agree that it could be a problem

The potential for abuse is what I'd worry about the most.

But here is where I am coming from: I came to the "catch" part after asking myself: "What if we provide all this help and it doesn't work or the parents don't act in good faith? What should we do about the kids?"

The kids have to be the priority. But there might be a less draconian solution.

[woo me with science]

26. I remember a program a while back.

I can't remember what state it was in, but they took single moms and their kids and placed them TOGETHER with a foster family. I remember interviews with the moms. Some were very upset at the loss of independence and need to follow the rules of the new house, but others were really, really grateful for the modeling of parenting skills.

At least this way parents and children could stay together.

The problem is that a program like this is probably only feasible with young single mothers. It may be very difficult to find families who feel capable of or willing to take in adult women who may have longer histories of drug use or criminal associations.

[ComerPerro]

23. Sounds like you're on the right track.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

25. There is home health

I know there used to be a program where home health workers went to the home and showed parents how to play with their kids, etc, to stimulate their growth and development. Day care for failure to thrive kids was subsidized by the state-don't know if this went by the wayside or not. I was involved with this type of day care for a while and found that it, in conjunction, seemed to really help families where the parent(s) appeared overwhelmed.

[Lars39]

27. I think paying a living wage would go a long way to helping families.

I noticed in your example that the parent was only working 8 hours.
A lot of people are having to work 2 and 3 jobs just to make it. And that's with no healthcare,probably. So they are continually one illness away from disaster.

There was a really good series about the working poor by Ductapefatwa a few years ago.
It's called Advice for the New Poor:

http://ductapefatwa.blogspot.com/2003/11/advice-for-new-poor-part-1-some-advice.html

[mzteris]

28. a couple of flaws

I don't want ANYONE I don't know watching my kids at night.

I'm not sure the "state" is qualified to provide quality daycare - look what a great job they're doing with everything else these days. :(

I don't think taking kids away to put into foster homes if a parent is doing everything they reasonably can to provide for them appropriately is the answer. You don't punish people for doing things RIGHT even if they still can't "get ahead"...



Here's my dream plan (if I was suddenly Bill Gates or Donald Trump or something)

Build a co-op community. Anyone (with need) can apply - but you have to agree to criteria to live there:

Have a job and/or get free job training and/or education assistance and classes on-site.

Free daycare (Also run as a co-op) (There would be on-site trained Child developmental specialists overseeing all daycare/preschool.)

Possibly an onsite school - elementary/middle.

Doctor/healthcare on site for day-to-day stuff - and referrals to specialists for greater issues.

Apartment "inspections" - you have to keep your place reasonably clean and orderly. (Builds personal responsibility.)

Everyone volunteers/donates time to the community: office, cleaning, cooking, babysitting, maintenance, building - some of these jobs would *also* be done by people who are getting additional training in whatever career field they are looking into. Can also be done for pay in addition to the volunteer time.

Drug/alcohol counseling for those who need it.

Nutrition classes, Parenting classes, "homemaking" classes (buying groceries, budgeting, etc.)

Mediation training.

Regular "meetings" (get-togethers) with residents to build socio/emotional support groups - a sense of community.

Curfews. No unauthorized people on the premises. Etc.... ok sounds strict - but it would be totally a VOLUNTARY community. If they didn't like it they don't have to join and they can always leave. Everything would be spelled out ahead of time.

They pay into a savings account (if they have a job) and/or earn $$ for work done in the community which goes into their savings account. The account would then be theirs to use as a down payment on a house or to move into their own rental unit (first last mo plus, etc.)

&&&&

Ok that's a brief sketch - not everything - AND I'm sure there are flaws - and some sounds kinda strict - and some too utopian - but - hey, I can dream, can't I?