Child Welfare Quotes

“As helpers, we often feel the need to see our impact in tangible, measurable ways. We allow negative language into our head about the “broken system;” we look through a lens of “it doesn’t matter, I can’t make a difference”. These ideas are surely contributing to our burnout.”
― Jenn Bruer, Helping Effortlessly: A Book of Inspiration and Healing

“Helping a child today will help prevent a broken adult tomorrow.”
― Kathleen Paydo

“Adults viewed suicidal ideation as a pathology. But for me it was logic. Weighing the bad against the good, projecting forward to decide if life was worth sticking around for.”
― Emi Nietfeld, Acceptance: A Memoir

“...child welfare officials deem it inappropriate for a brother and sister to sleep in the same bedroom once they reach a certain age. At some point, if the authorities were to find out that Kaitlin and Cole were sharing a room, Jennifer would be at risk of losing custody due to "neglect." By today's standards of child well-being, Jennifer can't move into a studio apartment to help balance her family's budget.”
― Kathryn Edin, $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America

“Light-touch government works more efficiently in the presence of social capital. Police close more cases when citizens monitor neighborhood comings and goings. Child welfare departments do a better job of “family preservation” when neighbors and relatives provide social support to troubled parents. Public schools teach better when parents volunteer in classrooms and ensure that kids do their homework. When community involvement is lacking, the burdens on government employees—bureaucrats, social workers, teachers, and so forth—are that much greater and success that much more elusive.”
― Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community

“Everyone who dealt with disadvantaged kids, from therapists to college admissions officers, treated us as if we could overcome any abuse or neglect with sheer force of will.”
― Emi Nietfeld, Acceptance: A Memoir

“It is inappropriate to call child protection "care" when experiences of the system are not "care"-like for everyone. "Care" essentializes the softening of a system that has a violent colonial history of genocide and ethnic cleansing, and has continued to feed its children into pipelines of homelessness and housing instability, poverty, prison and other problematic and violent systems. It fails to acknowledge that it is a system, one of which is plagued with the overrepresentation of Indigenous and Black children and families, a system built on white colonial racist values. "Care" as a word minimizes and erases the inequitable realities children, young people, families, and communities face across, not only the province of Ontario, but across the Nation. Child Protection System.”
― Cheyanne Ratnam

“Most males are thinking that half of a child the made belongs to them. But that's just wrong. Because they give only half of a plan for building the baby, and all the rest is done by mama alone. So, guys: think twice before saying "The half of this child is mine."

Die meisten Männer denken, dass ein halbes Kind, das sie gemacht haben, ihnen gehört. Aber das ist einfach falsch. Weil sie nur einen halben Plan für den Bau des Babys geben und der Rest von Mama alleine erledigt wird. Also, Leute: Überlegen Sie zweimal, bevor Sie sagen: "Die Hälfte dieses Kindes gehört mir.”
― Vivian Schey

“Most males are thinking that half of a child they've made belongs to them. But that's just wrong. Because they give only half of a plan for building the baby, and all the rest is done by mama alone. So, guys: think twice before saying "The half of this child is mine.”
― Vivian Schey

“Any exclusive system is a system of exclusion.”
― Emi Nietfeld, Acceptance: A Memoir

“Must we relearn everything you were ever taught about biology and history? Clownfish are the answer. Intersex people are cited to prove that you can change sex. But you know that your child isn’t a clownfish and is not intersex. You learn that your child was “assigned” a sex at birth. The nurses and doctors just decided for reasons unknown and possibly nefarious, what gender your child was. The DNA tests and ultrasounds are wrong as well, as science no longer exists. You learn there are forty-seven genders and that genders can change all the time. Sex is dead. It has no meaning and is just used as an excuse to discriminate against trans people and all the other-gendered people. You soon discover that yes, even the Holocaust was the source of suffering for no, not the Jewish people, but primarily transgender people. And of course, you are probably a Nazi yourself if you think differently. Historical figures, mostly women, it seems, are also now being reclaimed with their rightful trans identity. Joan of Arc and Louisa May Alcott were not feminist heroes but trans men. Trans women are literally women, you learn. That’s it. A fact. Women now have penises. Women are now committing rape and murder at higher rates than ever recorded throughout history. Trans women are also miraculously better at sports than natal women for reasons no one can discern. When competing against women, now known as uterus havers, trans women win all the competitions and titles. Any “cis” women objecting to this are just sore losers. “Cis” is the new label you must go by if you don’t despise the body you were born with and want to alter it. You are told this is a great privilege to be “cis” and that trans women suffer much more than any cis woman ever could or ever will, no matter what has happened to you as a “cis” woman. You go underground. You join groups that vet members. Here you can speak freely because all members know what you are going through and share your horror of the gender party.”
― Lisa Shultz, The Trans Train: A Parent's Perspective on Transgender Medicalization and Ideology

“To write about a child is to reckon with other childhoods.”
― Andrea Elliott, Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City

“In fact, about 75 percent of child welfare cases involve not abuse but neglect, which can often be caused by or confused with poverty.”
― Roxanna Asgarian, We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America

“Ain't nobody want to adopt me,' he says. 'I thought if I did good, they would let me get back with my brothers, but when they didnt' I said fuck it.”
― Roxanna Asgarian, We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America

“Unlike kids in family homes, kids in foster care today rely on a separate state agency, Residential Child Care Investigations, to look into reports of suspected abuse or neglect. That agency has a tendency to downgrade abuse reports without ever investigating them. During four months in 2019, the agency ruled out nearly half of the more than nine hundred abuse reports it received- with no investigation whatsoever.”
― Roxanna Asgarian, We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America

“Some kids, when they grown, come back and say, 'Why didn't you fight for us?' And I swear I did. We all did.”
― Roxanna Asgarian, We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America

“If you come from privilege,' she explained, 'and you respect money and power, and the people in your court don't have any of that- it's unconcious and sometimes concious racism and classism.”
― Roxanna Asgarian, We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America

“Kalton Harris says it's pretty common for young men like Dontay to drop out of programs designed to help them. All the barriers to good jobs, and all the other barriers that exist out in the world outside the program, are part of the reason, he says, but there is another: they have been deeply hurt at a young age, and they don't know how to deal with it.”
― Roxanna Asgarian, We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America