Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
Preventing child abuse is something we all care about. Yet, the first federal law enacted to do just that fails to actually reduce harm to children, instead powering a massive child welfare system that traumatizes and disrupts the lives of millions of Americans — disproportionately Black communities and those experiencing poverty.
As we honor Black history this February, we look back at a decades-old law that remains, to this day, a blight on generations of Black families.
In 1974, Congress passed the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, known as CAPTA. 50 years later, its devastating effects are clear. Lawmakers in Washington, D.C., working together with parents and youth experts who have suffered the harmful effects of this system, advocates, activists, scholars, and our communities, must act now to reconsider this law — and the system overall — that has let kids, families and communities down.
By vaguely and broadly defining abuse and neglect, CAPTA has enabled the creation of a punitive child welfare system that conflates the circumstances of poverty with parental neglect. Rather than acknowledging the systemic barriers faced by families, predominantly Black families, including a lack of access to quality food, housing, child care, health care, mental health supports, and other necessities can compromise a parent’s ability to provide for their children, child welfare agencies and courts label parents “unfit” and punish them. The need for systemic change is urgent — the current response not only hurts parents, it harms their children.
CAPTA, through federal funding, incentivizes states to prevent, assess, investigate, prosecute and treat child abuse and neglect. The result: 50 years of forcible family separation and hundreds of thousands of children entangled in a system described by…
Read the full article here
