Healthy Democracy

April is Child Abuse Awareness Month. Going to college, I took a child welfare class to become a social worker, and we were taught about child abuse and neglect. We were taught that there are times when the government has to intervene to protect the welfare of a child and act in the child’s best interest. Growing up, I had no trust in the government. Child Protective Services (CPS) workers were labeled “baby snatchers,” and they were to be feared rather than trusted.

Early in my career, I went on home visits, and I supported women who were involved with child welfare. I saw firsthand cases of extreme neglect. I will never forget walking into a woman’s apartment where I saw three children, a baby on the floor next to a pile of milk and cereal caked into the carpet, a toddler staring blankly at a TV, and a five-year-old who smiled at me with silver teeth. The TV was blaring, and we had to announce ourselves multiple times before Mom came out of the bedroom. Mom had issues with drugs and the kids had been taken away on numerous occasions. I walked away from that visit conflicted. There were other occasions where CPS intervened, simply because mom was a survivor of domestic violence and the system was being used against the survivor by her abuser, labeling her as a bad mother, in a vindictive agenda.