Professor Richard Barth is the lead author of a letter that appears in a recent issue of the Child Welfare League of America Newsletter.
Barth, and others, argue that the child welfare system must confront racism, but the services aren’t the issue.
"Current calls to eliminate all elements of structural racism in the United States include proposals to abolish child welfare services. Alan Dettlaff and Kristen Weber, in an op-ed published by The Imprint this summer, based their abolition argument on the idea that “the child welfare system causes harm to Black children and we have known this for decades.
Their article has the laudable intent of creating a society free of maltreatment, but is wrong on the facts, and short on anything specific about how to protect and support maltreated children."