By ChrisAnna Mink
Can a nearly 40-year-old law meant to protect children from abusive parents and caregivers do more harm than good? Some advocates — who were once victims of violence themselves — argue that it can.
Like most states, California has a “failure to protect” law that authorizes child welfare agencies to remove children when they believe an abused parent cannot ensure their kids’ safety. Neglect or emotional abuse is often the reason why children become dependents of the court under failure to protect laws, including when domestic violence is involved.
But because California’s law is vague compared to other states, social workers have broad discretion to decide when to remove kids from their families. At times, this can spare them from further trauma, or even save their lives.
Kelly Callahan, director of the Kids In the Dependency System clinic at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center: “Children who have witnessed violence between their caretakers can have (post traumatic stress disorder)…. They react the same way as children who have been abused.”
Separating children from their families, however, can create its own kind of trauma. It can disrupt a child’s developmental ability to form attachments; research shows that a secure relationship with a caring adult, such as the non-abusive parent, can build resiliency for a child.
For her story, ChrisAnna spoke with current and former social workers, domestic violence policy experts and advocates, state lawmakers and four mothers who lost children because of a failure to protect order.
Those mothers include Marie, a 36-year-old who said she was being punished for her partner’s abuse after the Los Angeles child welfare agency took her children away. Marie’s parents were able to adopt the children and she eventually left her now ex-husband. But the separation, which is still ongoing, causes her anguish.
Marie: “Right now the victims are seen just like a perpetrator…. My family would’ve been a lot different if we had more time.”
Calls to reform the law, such as clarifying that being a victim of domestic violence — similar to how being homeless or living in poverty — is not sufficient basis for charging the parent with neglect, have been slow to advance. After all, rescinding, or even modestly tweaking, a policy intended to protect a child can carry bad optics.
But there have been some attempts: Two years ago, Democratic state Sen. Susan Rubio of West Covina authored an unsuccessful bill to compel the state to study domestic violence in the child welfare system, telling colleagues at the time that the law “fails to recognize” the trauma of a parent “who is a domestic violence survivor.”
Other organizations, such as the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence, also have looked at the failure to protect law, but it isn’t calling for significant changes.
Krista Colon, the partnership’s director: “It’s an issue we’ve tried to look at a couple of ways, but what makes sense statewide is tricky.
For more on California’s domestic violence law, read ChrisAnna’s story. And watch Marie talk about her case in a video by ChrisAnna and CalMatters’ assistant visuals editor Adriana Heldiz on our YouTube channel.
