You Don't Need a Parenting Class
Emma Ketteringham on mandatory reporting, surveillance, and policing in the child welfare system.
Today’s interview revisits an ongoing conversation with Emma Ketteringham of the Bronx Defenders. We first spoke with Emma in 2020. That conversation is now available here.
This interview with Emma Ketteringham, managing director of the Family Defense Practice at the Bronx Defenders, was conducted and condensed by Tatti Ribeiro for franknews on May 22, 2023.
My name is Emma Ketteringham, and I serve as the managing director of the Family Defense Practice at the Bronx Defenders. The Bronx Defenders is a public defender nonprofit located in the South Bronx, committed to transforming how people are represented in the criminal, family, immigration, and civil legal proceedings and, in doing so, transforming those systems.
We practice according to a multidisciplinary holistic model with teams of attorneys, social workers, parent advocates and admin staff. Our approach is unique because we do not just represent a person in a single legal proceeding, but strive to address the embedded consequences of that proceeding, as well as the circumstances that led to system involvement. In the family defense practice, we represent parents who have been reported to the family policing system and who are at risk of losing their children.
Most often, the parents we represent are under surveillance and at risk of family separation not because they have harmed their children, but because the system polices low-income Black and Latino families living in under-resourced communities like the South Bronx. In NY City, Black and Latino children comprise 90% of the system. The parents we represent are provided the service of not only an attorney who fights the case in court and protects their legal rights, but are also paired with a social worker or a parent advocate, who is a non-attorney advocate who addresses the various demands of the family policing system and connects parents to supports and services that reduce the harm of the system.
What elements of policing are involved in the child welfare system, or family policing system as it is now often referred to?
The family policing system is a large system made up of federal and state laws implemented at the local level. Carceral principles are infused in its approach of reporting, investigation, surveillance, and separation of low income, predominantly Black and Latino families.
Every state, including New York, has mandatory reporting laws, which are laws that require certain people, in certain professions, to report suspected child abuse or child maltreatment. In New York, that list is very long — it includes guidance counselors, social workers, nurses, teachers, and police. This is where the policing begins. It begins in schools, it begins in hospitals, it begins in mental health clinics, it begins in therapy sessions. Mandatory reporting laws require folks to report by calling the State Central Registry in New York, which is a state-operated hotline that receives calls 24 hours. Child maltreatment is defined very broadly by state law to include not just child abuse as one might think, but circumstances of poverty and a lack of resources. This means that low income families who come into contact with public social services and medical systems are at great risk of being reported to the family policing system, even by professionals who believe they have good intentions.
The calls accepted are then forwarded to the local Child Protective Agency, known as the Administration for Children's Services (ACS) in New York City. ACS conducts an investigation of the family, often collaborating with the New York Police Department.
When ACS visits a home, it initiates a highly intrusive investigation into every detail of a family’s life even if unrelated to the initial report. If a call concerns a teenager's mental health, perhaps prompted by signs of depression or anxiety at school , ACS will investigate as if they are investigating a crime. Even though that report is about the adolescent's mental well-being, ACS agents will search the home and ask invasive questions about everything. I mean everything -- a parent’s income, romantic life, drug use, job history, etc. They will inspect cupboards and refrigerators. They will talk about sleeping arrangements in the home. Often the investigation causes further emotional distress for the family, rather than the support the teenager and parent might need.
Once that investigation occurs, then ACS again has unfettered broad discretion about what to do next. They might decide it's an emergency and remove the child from the home without going to court first. If they do that, they have to go to court and file a case, which is when a parent would meet the family defender.
ACS might decide not to remove or file in court but instead offer services which they call “preventive services''. Of course this is a better outcome than the removal of one’s child and a summons to court. But it’s important to recognize that the quality or type of service offered is often not what a parent wants for their family. And if they refuse what is offered, they are at risk of family separation and a court case. So it is questionable whether preventive services are truly voluntary and ultimately a family might end up in court regardless. I think what's really notable here also is that if you are not a parent of wealth, you don't have access to an attorney to talk about what your rights are in the situation where you are “offered” services with serious repercussions if you do not accept. There is also no privacy with these services - even therapy. ACS will follow up to make sure that the child is attending these sessions and see notes from the therapist. All of this information is available to ACS. So even ACS intervention that does not include the ultimate horror of family separation is intrusive and harmful surveillance that often exacerbates the underlying circumstances that led to their involvement in the first place.
That's what I mean by policing – the system does not offer help, support, or resources. It offers investigation and surveillance.
Right.
And who is policed by this system? This is not something that parents in well-resourced, wealthier communities ever experience. If they do, there is a documentary or news story made about it because it is so incredibly rare. ACS intervention instead is concentrated in communities like the South Bronx – communities with high child poverty rates and where families are forced to raise families with fewer resources and are subjected to intense policing of their everyday lives. The family policing system is best understood as a predatory system in these communities that causes and exacerbates, rather than addresses, the challenges that all families experience.
Is there pushback against mandatory reporting?
In recent years, there's been a lot more attention paid to the harms of mandatory reporting and family policing, and a lot of questioning about whether the system as it exists actually serves families or helps children. People are asking do we really want people to stay away from drug treatment or stay away from seeking mental health services if they have children because they know they'll get reported to the system? When we turn helping professionals into police with the power to take children away from their families, we drive people away from the very services set up to provide support. This leaves families with less support and fewer resources because of a real threat of family separation that families of privilege who rely on similar resources cannot imagine.
There is a recent article written by a pediatrician who quit his job because of this reality. He writes how he was so dismayed about how his patient’s mothers could never express their concerns and could never openly ask questions about their child's treatment, out of fear that someone in the hospital would report her for not being capable of meeting her child's health needs. He wrote about how he saw, especially with the mothers of his Black patients, a guarded distrust held by families for their health professionals. Mandatory reporting laws breed this distrust and are a public policy failure because they result in turning people away from the very services they need to access.
There is real momentum behind re-examining and even repealing these laws. For example, there is a group that has organized and called itself Mandated Reporters Against Mandated Reporting because there are people who are waking up to the fact that when they report these situations, the children they purport to be helping are not getting the help they need. The family policing and foster system isn't equipped to provide children with what the reporter hoped the family would get in the long run – whether it was a safer apartment or a housing condition fixed or an eviction prevention or money for food or laundry. And, in fact placement in the foster system can cause a whole new set of harms.
If a child is coming to school and you notice that their uniform isn't laundered ever or they are hungry, you're right to be concerned. We should not turn away from that kind of hardship. But what about giving them a roll of quarters to do laundry? Why do we instead unleash a harmful policing response? It's not even rational as it doesn't actually address the harm about which you're so concerned.
People get buried in bureaucracy. By the time people meet you, in a court setting, or to review a case – the damage has largely been done.
It is true that by the time we meet our clients in court, a lot of the harm by the system has occurred. Homes have been searched, children questions without their parents, and parents forced to agree to a host of things they don’t need or want out of fear. But the bigger problem is that the entire system is responding when so much harm has already been done. The family policing system is the greatest example of a system designed - although ineffectively - to take the babies out of the river rather than stopping the babies from being thrown in. It is a reactive and harmful approach to family life. And it is generative in that family separation and foster system involvement lead to the same harmful circumstances that give rise to becoming involved in the system in the first place.
Yeah. What are your thoughts about what should be happening at the top of this issue?
There is a lot of attention being paid to the family policing system right now. Important press and books have come out which reveal how it works. There is a also an exciting new coalition in New York City called Narrowing the Front Door. This is a coalition of parents and youth who have survived the system, advocates, funders, and even people who work in the system. It is chaired by Joyce McMillan, who is the founder and leader of JMac for Families, a group that advocates for change. She has lived experience with the system and she is an incredible movement builder, community organizer and advocate. She has moved further forward in the last year than we have seen in the previous decade. I mean, she is a force.
Narrowing the Front Door coalition convened five to six webinars last summer where parent and youth experts with lived experience, judges, lawyers, academics - everybody, you name it, convened and brainstormed what change needed to happen. From that we wrote a report and recommendations for every branch of government to re-imagine what support for families should look like to narrow and ultimately shut the pathways that lead into the system.
There are plenty of different recommendations, each aimed at different sectors of society. First, we propose re-evaluating the mandated reporting laws. This could involve repealing or significantly limiting them. Second, we suggest exploring the implementation of universal income programs. When families are struggling, the family policing system often responds, but instead of relying on this system with its policing features and known harms, why don't we provide families with the support they need right from the start? We recommend looking into universal income programs that offer unrestricted financial support to families.
Another recommendation is aimed at ensuring that parents know their rights when ACS comes to their door because a report has been made against them. This is a proposed law called “family Miranda '' named after the Miranda Rights that are read to a person under arrest. Right now, ACS can say whatever they want in order to get into a family’s home and they do. We heard from parents over and over who say that ACS told them that they had to let them in or ACS could take their children. In fact, a parent has the right to say that ACS cannot come in - just as they have that right with the police - unless they have a court order issued by a judge who has reviewed whatever evidence against them. Why is ACS not required to inform parents of their rights when they are being investigated? As you noted earlier in this interview, by the time a parent meets us – their attorney, the harm has been done. ACS has entered their home, questioned their children, and often removed them. If ACS were to inform parents about their rights, parents could consult an attorney, learn their rights, and, where appropriate, demand that ACS put their proof to the test in court before unnecessary harmful and traumatic family separation occurs. This legislation is conservative in that it does not invent new rights, but simply requires that parents are informed of the rights they have.
Who do you want on the receiving end of that report?
The new commissioner of ACS, Jess Dannhauser, was part of Narrowing The Front Door before becoming commissioner. As a result, he is aware of the coalition and has been open to hearing us out, and the work has a lot of momentum. In addition to those in leadership at ACS, we need the interest and cooperation of the legislature, family courts, schools, health organizations and other public institutions. Re-imaging society’s response to families and ensuring that children are safe and well takes change in almost every aspect of public life and a true commitment to families and children.
There's another bill which would change anonymous reporting to the ACS to confidential reporting. That would mean that someone would have to give their name even if that name was not disclosed ultimately to the parent. This would hopefully curb some of that anonymous harassing reporting that can happen through the system. One of the nastiest things you can do to a neighbor, or that a landlord could do to a tenant, is make a call and get ACS.
There's also informed consent legislation that is in the works, which would require hospitals to ask for permission before they drug test a birthing person or their infant. That would really help, because so many of our cases begin with non-consensual secretive drug testing. There's many reports that show the race disparities and who gets tested and who gets reported for pregnant people. A very recent report showed that not only do black people get drug tested more, they're reported more often when the test is positive, even though rates of drug use during pregnancy are actually slightly higher for white people.
Some of these suggestions are so simple.
These changes are simple and fair. They don’t invent new rights - they just ensure that parents are informed and protect against unfairness. I don’t understand who would want to live in a country where a government is not required to explain to its citizens their rights? The practice of trampling these rights does not just endanger families who are investigated by ACS, it endangers all of us.
It is important to consider that family separation or the threat of separation is a form of terror.Family separation is used as a tool of war in international conflict. Family separation was used on the US-Mexico border in 2018, to traumatize and deter people from seeking safety in this country. It's being used in Ukraine as a weapon of war. There is nothing more violent and more terrorizing for a government to do. Someone might say, “Yes, but isn't a child better off?” And that person clearly does not know the reality of the foster system. Study after study shows that children do better with their parents – even where there is risk - than with the state. Children are more likely to be abused and neglected in the foster system and the outcomes for children are not positive. You are three times more likely to be abused as a child in the foster system than you are in your own home – even in a home with risk. You are less likely to graduate from school, you are less likely to be employed, you are not likely to be adopted. You are likely to be released from the foster system without any family connections, without any of the mental health services that you were relying upon while in the system, without any housing, without employment, and without a plan. The state does not make a good parent.
The Bronx Defenders has been serving the South Bronx community for many years, and now we have 18 and 21-year-olds coming to us and saying, "You represented my mom. What happened to my life?" We're starting to see, by virtue of the fact that we've been here long enough, that the promise of permanency is not met. The children taken from their homes grow up and seek answers because their life was disrupted.
Most telling of all is what the pandemic taught us about this system. During Covid and the government shut down, reports to the state and court filings against parents plummeted during Covid because the system basically shut down. There was misleading press where child welfare officials were saying, “Oh my gosh, these kids, they're getting abused and no one knows about it.” But now there are reports that show – and even former commissioner David Hansel and the current commissioner, Dannhauser, have both affirmed - that during the pandemic when reports stopped, child abuse and neglect did not go up. In fact, it plummeted. We can attribute that to the fact that also during the pandemic, the government provided unprecedented support for families in the form of cash, food, and rent. During the pandemic we had an unplanned experiment in how to support families without policing them and it shows that cash assistance keeps children and families safe and well better than the family policing system ever has.
I think it is this experience that has emboldened even ACS leadership to pause. I think they are more reasonably open to the idea that the system casts too wide a net; that it should not police family poverty; that supports for families should be separate from a policing system. We need a society where all families have what they need to raise healthy and well children — this includes childcare, healthcare, safe housing, clean air, and thriving schools. If you don't have childcare, you don't need a parenting class, you need a babysitter. If you have a dangerous condition in your home, you don't need a foster placement for your child, you need a landlord to fix the condition in your home. If you are unhoused, you need a home, you don't need a parenting class. And if you're upset because the government takes your children unfairly, you don't need a mental health evaluation or anger management, you need the government to stop doing harmful things in the name of help. We need to take the lessons learned from the pandemic, and what parents and children who have survived the system are telling us, and take a hard look at what we call child welfare in this country. We need to acknowledge that it has never worked and does not work now.