What did the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 do? Why does Roberts suggest that Congress changed course with the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997
What do you think about the length of time that agencies should be given to work toward reunification? What are the strongest arguments for allowing reunification efforts to take a long time? What arguments suggests these efforts should be fairly brief?
Dr. Roberts suggests that there is now a strong preference for adoption (which involves termination of parental rights) over reunification when it comes to children in foster care. She also explains the difficulties of caseworkers who are expected to plan concurrently for adoption and reunification. What do you think of these competing priorities? Do you think of foster and adoptive placements as “safer” and/or “better” for children in the system than reunification with natal families? What impact do you think these policy priorities have on children, parents, and child welfare workers? Think again about those intersectional identities we began with in December.
Dr. Roberts portrays poor Black parents as disadvantaged in relation to foster parents and the child welfare system. What do you think of the evidence she presents? If she is right, why do you think the traditional respect for the rights of biological parents over strangers has been so easily displaced?
What is Roberts’ point in comparing child-parent separations caused by divorce with children removed from families by child welfare authorities?
Do you agree with Roberts that our laws and public policies value biological bonds between certain parents and children while actively deprecating others? If so, does the child welfare system violate the principle of equal protection for children, parents, or both
Do you think that the child welfare system’s responsibility to protect children from harm conflicts with its responsibility to serve families? If so, how would you resolve the conflict?
What practical factors does Roberts mention that help to explain the current bias of the child welfare system toward the removal of African-American children from their natal kin?
Current policy mandates that “reasonable efforts” be made to reunify families before parental rights are terminated. What do you think such efforts should look like? What does Roberts think?
What does Roberts make of the social work research literature on the effectiveness of family preservation programs?
Parents with substance abuse problems offer clear examples of the conflict between family reunification and speedy progress toward permanency for children, Roberts notes. Why is this so? Do you think that substance abuse is or should be treated any differently by the child welfare system than other adult problems (such as poverty, homelessness, food insecurity, etc.) that make life difficult for children? Why or why not? Do you think there is or should be a difference between a mother who abuses drugs or alcohol during pregnancy and parents whose addictions endanger children after they are born? Why or why not?
How do policies that aim for either speedy reunification or speedy adoption adversely effect African-American children in particular? Do you agree with Roberts that alternative arrangements such as subsidized guardianship might be a preferable arrangements for large numbers of children?
“White people’s demand for white children isn’t seen as a race-based claim, whereas the position that Black children belong with Black adoptive parents is” (167). Explain what she means by this. Do you agree? Would the conversation about transracial adoption change significantly if non-white parents adopted white children? Do you think it should?
Why does Roberts think that adoption cannot possibly help to solve the crisis of most children in foster care?
