The Administration for Children’s Services has engag🎃ed in “pervasive di♒scriminatory practices,” according to a lawsuit filed by Chanetto Rivers in federal court last week.
Rivers, who is black, claims that the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) removed her newborn baby from her custo🧜dy as part of the agency’s “diওsparate treatment of Black families” which “cause[s] lasting, intergenerational trauma.”
Whether or not ACS is racist, Chanett🎐o Rivers is not a good test case.
The f🌳acts are clear: A few hours before Rivers ga✨ve birth in 2021, she smoked marijuana.
Whওen her child was born, both she and the baby tested positive for the drug.
With marijuana now (and then) legal in New York State, such findings are no longer reason ಞenough to separate children from their parents.
Nonetheless, ACS told the hospital not to release the ba𝔍by to Rivers.
The aﷺctual positive test was hardly the only fa♈ctor.
Rivers had two other children previously removed from her custody because of incidents involving drugs and alcohol and because she failed to obtain medical care for one of them. (ACS also claims she was smoking weed in the hospital right after the birth, though tඣhis h💎as not been substantiated.)
Because ACS can𒈔not discuss Rivers’ cases, the details remain unclear.
What is clear is that Rivers🌼 had still not been reunified with the other childrജen when she gave birth.
Bu🧔t Rivers isn’t suing over those pr꧋evious removals, possibly because their details wouldn’t bolster her case.
Substance abuse and caring for small children are rarely a good combination; it’s hard enough to do so when you’re perfectly sober.
Maybe racism is not to blame for all of this mother’s problems after🐻 all.
As more states legalize drug use, child welfare agenc⛦ies are having a harder time detec♐ting when such usage puts children in harm’s way — and intervening when necessary.
Police departments are also investigating far fewer reports of dꦕrug use, making it that much harder to identify a💯t-risk kids.
Even when the♏y do, progressive soc✱ial service agendas do little to hold these parents accountable.
Accountability doesn’t have to meaꦡn 𒁃removing children — court-mandated addiction treatment is an option as well.
This kind of intervention could save children from futur✤e abuse an♌d neglect.
There is a strong link between mothers using drugs while pregnant and the subsequent maltreatment⭕ of their children.
of over half a million babies born in California in 2006, “61.2% of those diagnosed [with substance exposure] were reported to [child protective services] before age 1 and nearly one third (29.9%) were placed in foster care.”
We don’t accept people driving a car or operatin꧒g heavy machinery when they’re high — so why should we believe they’re capable of supervising small children — let alone caring for newborns — after🥃 smoking pot?
The idea that parents should be held accountable for their drug use seems foreign to River🦹s and the Bronx Defenders (a pro bono advocacy group representing her).
It also appears foreign to , which first reported this story and took at face value her la🃏wyers’ claim that there is no connection🔥 between Rivers’ previous ACS cases and her current circumstances.
Rather, Rivers is positioned as another victim of racism, instead of an adult c🐷apable of making decisions for herself and her children.
What would possess a woman with two kids in the foster care system to💛 smoke weed while nine months pregnant?
As evidence of this racism, the lawsuit cites disparate rates of investigations and removals of black children into foster care — as li🧸kely♔ to die from maltreatment as their white peers.
So it would make sense that they are reported and 🥃investigated more frequently.
Child Maltreatment looked at the disparities in risks to children as measured by factors like child🦂 poverty and infant mortality.
Black children had much higher risk levels (more than twice as h♔igh for infant mortal✅ity, for instance).
They then compared disparities in those risk fac🔴tors to disparities in reporting susp𝄹ected abuse or neglect cases to CPS.
The authors conclude: “Availabl♊e data provide no evidence that Black children were over-reported relative t👍o observed risks and harms reflected in non-CPS data.”
The Bronx Defenders also point in Rivers’ lawsuit to a recent report which surveyed 50 ACS workers of color in an agency with thousands of employees about the existence of structural racism in the system.
The authors found that most volunteers who wanted to par𓆉ticipate — all were minorities, and no white people were allowed — said the agency was structurally racist. (Talk about leading the science!)
Of course, it 🌞is perfectly possible that individual caseworkers are racist or that their per🔜sonal biases are influencing their decisions.
But the eviden꧙ce pres🏅ented by Rivers and her lawyers is hardly convincing.
