Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark - "How Social Justice Has Corrupted Child Welfare In The U.S." – With Author Naomi Schaefer Riley

Episode Date: December 31, 2021

When the left weaponizes the rampant problems within the foster care system against the right, they seem to always leave out one KEY component: it’s the LEFT'S SOCIAL JUSTICE POLICIES that are rotting our child welfare system in the U.S. from the inside out. Get ready to be ANGRY and SHOCKED by author and investigative journalist Naomi Schaefer Riley who EXPOSES how the foster care system is ACTUALLY run.Whether it’s learning that abused kids are used as tools through the child welfare system...

It is the spillover with Alex Clark. If I told you that the child welfare system in America was swayed towards protecting adults and not the children, would you believe me? What if I told you that social justice initiatives within the foster care system aren't stamping out racism but perpetuating it? Left-wing activists are destroying the child welfare system and putting at-risk kids in imminent danger, not less. One woman has spent the last several years investigating progressive ideology in our family court and foster care systems

in the United States. She has provided rock-solid evidence that will terrify you and at the same time motivate you to advocate for a complete overhaul in the way we handle abused children in this country. She has put together compelling information on how the very government institutions

that are designed, to save children in crisis are the ones deliberately keeping children in harm's way by placing them at the altar of social justice gods. She is the author of six books and was a columnist for the New York Post and an editor and writer for the Wall Street Journal. At the moment, she is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where her work is focused on both child welfare and foster care issues. Her latest book, which just came out last October, is called No Way to treat a child, how the foster care system, family courts, and racial activists are wrecking young lives. Now, before you prepare to have your mind blown about the state of child welfare under

progressivism in America, I have to warn you that we had a little, we had a little downstairs mix up. No, not that. We did have a mix up where I couldn't use the normal spillover studio for actually conducting this interview. So I had to film it in basically what looks like the Squidward Tentacles alone episode of SpongeBob, if you remember that, or it looks like I'm in the Matrix. So if you're wondering why it looks so different and why it looks like I'm in a white padded room, that is why, for those of you who are watching this on YouTube, the Poplittics YouTube, is where you can watch the interviews. Nonetheless, please welcome Naomi Schaefer Riley to the spillover.

What led you, Naomi, to really wanting to investigate the problems with child welfare in this country? So a few years ago, I actually wrote a different book. It was about American Indians. And I traveled across the country visiting different reservations in Indian territories. And for those of your listeners who don't know, I, Indian communities have actually some of the worst child welfare outcomes in the country, very high rates of child neglect and very broken foster care system. And I came back from a lot of those trips. And I really started to wonder, like, what does the rest of the system look like? are we treating other children any better? And so that really led me down this path. I was a columnist at the New York Post for a while, and I wrote about some of the high-profile child fatalities that occurred in New York City and tried to just understand why the system seemed so broken and why so many of these decisions did not seem to be made in the best interests of children. Well, one of the first things that I read that was a huge bombshell in your book was that the child welfare services are not even focusing on the actual abused children anymore.

They're focusing on the parents and the caregivers who are the abusers. So could you explain why that is? Sure. Well, I think a lot of people would be surprised to find this out just as you were. You know, when we, when police answer, for instance, a domestic violence call, you know, a boyfriend or husband who has been abusing a wife or girlfriend, the police don't immediately say, hey, how can we get you guys back? together. But that's actually the reaction that our child welfare services often has when they come

to find a child who's been abused or neglected. How can we put this family back together? The reason I think that they are taking that approach is because they feel very sorry for the adults who are touched by the child welfare system. And we should feel sorry for them. Many of them have experienced extreme poverty, mental illness, discrimination, all sorts of problems, addiction. And so we sort of feel bad for them. And as a result, we kind of make decisions based on their interests and their desires, not on the best interests of the children. And the ideology that is really sort of guiding child welfare agencies and family courts is one of family preservation and family reunification. It's about looking out for the family, not necessarily looking out for the child. You're absolutely right.

And I've talked about this on previous episodes of the spillover, but I volunteer as a child advocate, a court-appointed special advocate. And these kids are given back to their abusive parents over and over and over again. Their parents keep getting, you know, three, four, five, sometimes more chances to get it right. So how many mistakes do you think we should be allowing parents to make when it comes to child abuse? Should there be a second chance? Sure. I mean, this is one of the hardest questions in child welfare. And there are some laws that are supposed to be guiding us, but we are not following them. In the 1990s, a bipartisan coalition in Congress came together

and passed something called the Adoption and Safe Families Act. And it says if a child has been in foster care for 15 of the last 22 months, then a state is supposed to move to terminate parental rights. And that may sound harsh. I mean, it may sound like we are really trying to punish these parents, but we're not. We're trying to say foster care is not a permanent place for children. The average amount of time that children spend in foster care now is 20 months.

in some states like New York, which is where I live, the average amount of time is actually 30 months. And then you get a significant portion of the foster care population who are spending three, four, five years in foster care. And especially for young children, like we know how much trauma that involves, how many times they get moved back and forth to different foster homes, back to their biological homes, returning over and over again. And those young children, especially, are unable to form the kind of secure attachment that they need in order to develop into functioning adults. And so I think what's happening is, you know, we're not following those laws. We're not really paying attention to the timelines. We're operating again on the timelines

of adults. The other thing I will say is that in so many of these cases, really the vast majority of these cases, substance abuse of one sort or another and mental illness are really heavily involved. And we know, you know, independent of the child welfare system, I think most people would acknowledge how difficult it is to end addiction, how difficult it is to kick a substance abuse habit. But the child welfare system somehow assumes like, oh, I'll just put this parent into a 30-day program and magically they'll be fine and then we can sit in the kid back home again. Well, and it seems what's interesting is that right now in culture, it seems like it's kind of become trendy right now, you know, to call out abuse. So I'm talking about like the USA

gymnastics scandal, the Catholic Church, Boy Scouts, human trafficking, people are obsessed with these stories. But weirdly, people seem to turn a blind eye to abuse happening within the home. Why is that? So again, you're absolutely right. And the double standards here are quite amazing. I mean, most states actually even have guidelines for how to reunite children with the sexual abusers who have harmed them. You know, sort of like a, you know, a 10-step program for figuring out how we can return a child to a home where a father or a step-brother or a stepfather or mother's boyfriend has already sexually abused them. At the same time that we're obviously up in arms, and rightly so,

about all of these other sexual abuse scandal. So somehow family members get a pass, which I think is insane. Why is that, again, it's this sort of sense that the adults are really victims here and that families should stay together no matter what. I think some of that is driven. There's an underlying racial ideology that is going on here, a sense that too many black children in particular are being removed from their families. There's definitely a disparate rate of removal to foster care, even of investigations of child abuse that happen in the African-American community. The problem is that when people talk about that,

they don't acknowledge some of the underlying problems. Black children in this country are twice as likely to be abused and three times as likely to die as a result of maltreatment as white children are. And so our child protective services need to go to where the need is. They need to sort of look at which are the children who are most at risk and be investigating and sometimes removing those children, regardless of whether, you know, our Excel spreadsheets come out even or not. What you just said is something that will really trigger, so to speak, so many people,

because it has been ingrained in us by the media that systemic racism and racial biases are the reason why so many black children are placed into foster care. But what you just said, your research has proven quite the opposite. Yeah. I mean, I really, you know, people just, they look at these basic numbers. They say too many black children are foster care. This is ridiculous. It must be evidence that the caseworkers or the family courts are biased.

No, it's the fact that a disproportionate number of black children are actually in danger. And one of the reasons for that that we often fail to talk about is family structure in this country. Children who live in a home with a single mother and a non-relative male, typically a mother's boyfriend, are 11 times more likely to be abused than children who are living with two married parents. And family structure is not distributed evenly in this country, unfortunately. Black children are much more likely to live in that family arrangement with a single mother and a non-relative male than white children are. And that accounts for a lot of the difference that you see in child abuse, neglect, investigations, and in foster care. You were so courageous to write this book because you call out the social justice rot that is happening to our child welfare system, which I love. What are the types of social justice initiatives that are being implemented in the foster care system? and how are they hurting not helping abuse children?

Sure. Well, one example, which really shocked me at the time, I spent some time in New Orleans. I was actually called by a number of folks who kind of have some contact with the child welfare system. They wanted to talk about a judge there who actually has basically stopped removing black children from their home, has stopped approving their entry into foster care because she just thinks too many black children are being removed. And she said to me, why aren't there really? more Vietnamese kids in my courtroom. I don't know. Is that is that your job to make sure that there are enough Vietnamese kids being removed to foster care? It's almost like she wants there to be more kids being

abused as long as it shows diversity. As long as it comes out even, you know, on your list. And so, you know, so she is actually, and I talk to pediatricians, folks in the legal system there, who are really concerned that she is purposefully keeping black kids in dangerous situations because of her racial ideology. So sometimes you get this on the front end. You get this, you know, judges who are making these decisions, caseworkers who are making these decisions. A lot of pressure is coming from child welfare agencies to leave children in dangerous homes. New York City just had three very high profile child fatalities, kids who had been reported multiple times to child welfare authorities and child welfare workers decided to leave them in their homes anyway. The second way that I think, you know, these social

justice warriors really get into and infect in many ways, the child welfare system is on the back end, this sort of idea of, you know, finding placements for children in foster care or sometimes for adoption after their parental rights have been terminated. And there we are engaged in this insane game of skin color matching. There are a lot of people in this country who think that, you know, the most important thing for a child is that their skin color match the skin color of the adults who care for them. Now, I personally think that. the most important thing is for a child to find a permanent, safe, loving home. And I think the vast majority of Americans, frankly agree with me on that. But you have, ever since the 1970s, you had the

National Association of Black Social Workers, they're literally their position since the 70s has been a white family is no place for a black child. They would rather have that child languish and foster care, go into a congregate care facility, whatever it is, as long as they can avoid a white family. And that's actually illegal. I mean, in the 1990s, again, we passed something. called the Multi-ethnic Placement Act, which said no discrimination on the basis of skin color or ethnicity when it comes to placing these children. But that law is regularly flouted. And you often hear about judges who are taking race into consideration or child welfare agencies who are kind of doing it under the table. It's really unfortunate. And it is going to result in many more black children

not being able to find those safe, permanent, loving homes. If the data is there that these policies are harmful, Why does the Department of Child Services, why do family courts still go along with it? So, I mean, you know, you can look at all sorts of data. Like, as we were talking about, you know, they want to say, look, the data shows that too many black children are being taken into foster care. And they will end the discussion there. There are folks who want to abolish the foster care system entirely.

They think we should end a drug testing. They think we should stop police from intervening so much in domestic violence cases because too often it turns up cases of child abuse too. So they're, I mean, in part, what they're trying to do is actually hide the data. If you pretend these numbers don't exist, then you can make up whatever policies you want. But I think the other thing that just allows them to do this is this sort of focused on quote unquote lived experience, that all the data in the world doesn't matter if I can show you a story of an adult who says they've been really harmed by this, you know, where they talk about, well, you know, I grew up in the foster care system, but if only, you know,

they had let me stay with my mother, everything would have been fine. And you're, you know, I think your heart really goes out to people who are in that situation. Unfortunately, you know, it's very hard to sort of run a kind of, you know, counter argument here and say, like, actually, no, your mother was, you know, addicted to cocaine and it would have been really hard for her to care for you. You know, a lot of times people kind of come up with their own backstory as they would have imagined it. But again, these days, you know, that lived experience and that testimony counts more than all the data in the world, it seems. Well, it has been drilled into my mind as a CASA that kinship or family placement should be given preference over all else when it comes to figuring out

where these kids should go. And the reason I've been given for that is that to place kids with a stranger is actually more traumatic than placing them with a relative, even if it's a relative, that they've never even met before. And you talk about this in the book, too, and I was like, oh, my gosh, she just, you got it. I mean, you covered every single aspect of child welfare that I'm, you know, I'm so new to this. And you've been studying this forever, but I'm just like, she really does know this. So explain how this is problematic. And then could you share some stories of this happening to kids in the foster care system and how just this idea of placing them with family over a stranger makes no sense whatsoever in some cases?

Yeah. So kinship care is sort of like the all-time. solution that most child welfare agencies offer that we don't you know some child welfare agencies like New Jersey's recently said we are not even accepting anymore foster care family volunteers non-relative volunteers because we've solved this whole problem with kinship care i mean that is completely false in so many ways so the first problem with kinship care i mean on its face of course kinship care makes total sense you know if you or i like you know found ourselves like unable to take care of our child of course we'd want our mother or sister or aunt cousin you know to come in and take care of that child for us

But first of all, these are already people who have let the abuse and neglect get to a point where the government has actually had to step in. So these are not people who are necessarily looking out in the same way for the best interest of the children. Then you have the problem that a lot of these family members, extended family members, also suffer from the same kinds of dysfunction that the immediate family members suffer from. It's not uncommon to find that a mother who's suffering from substance abuse also has a, you know, has her own mother who is suffering from those kinds of problems. And for those, you know, for people who are familiar like with the book Hillbilly Elegie, I bring this up because that's sort of presented as like one of these great examples of how kinship care worked because J.D. Vance's grandmother took him in after his mother was abusive and neglectful to him. But J.D. Vance's grandmother was not exactly some, you know, great example

of who you'd want caring for kids. This is a woman who was in an abusive marriage herself. And at one point, she doused her husband in gasoline and set him on. on fire. So, you know, as someone who is trying to decide, you know, what is a safe place for children? Like, would that be your choice? I mean, we often actually don't require kinship placements to go through the same kind of even background checks that we require for non-relative placements. So I'm not saying that every non-relative foster care giver is a great option. But the idea that kinship care is the solution to all of these problems, I think is not true. And then, of course, you know, I've talked to so many families, you know, foster families who've cared for a child for years at a time sometimes.

And then a relative comes in who either doesn't know the child or who was never expressed interest in caring for the child in the past and all of a sudden swoops in and says, no, now I'm going to take this child. That child is so traumatized by having been removed from really, in some cases, the only real family they ever knew just because kinship care is the law of the land. And I think it's a real problem. Well, when kids are actually severely injured due to child abuse or, you know, tragically even die, is it because absolutely no one knew what was going on and no one had reported it? No, absolutely not. I think this is one of the very common misconceptions about the child welfare system. I mean, you have these high profile cases like the Turpin case out in Los Angeles. You know,

kids locked in the basement and tortured for years. It was tragic. And the neighbors said, you know, we had no idea what was going that is really uncommon. Most child welfare cases we know about. We know these fatalities we have warning about. We know they've been reported before. They may have even been removed before. And the things that precede the child fatality, I think, is another misconception. People think, oh, well, first the kid must have a black eye,

and then the kid must have this kind of bruise or broken bone. In fact, what we find is that the majority of child fatalities from maltreatment are actually due to neglect. And what that tells you is that neglect is not something that's harmless. Neglect is not like, oh, I let my kid, you know, just walk to the park by himself and child welfare services got a little nosy and picked them up. Neglect is often the signs of neglect are, you know, a family that has had their heat turned off or doesn't have running water, a child who doesn't have food over, you know, the course of several days. Or a new winter coat. Absolutely. And those cases, I think a lot of people assume, oh, that's just poverty. And if we gave these families enough money, they would be able to solve this

problem for themselves. Unfortunately, that's not the case. We actually have a lot of programs for people who find themselves in these situations. And there are poor families all over this country who do a great job of raising their kids. And I actually am kind of offended by the way, these child welfare activists are kind of throwing all those families under a bus, you know, in order to make this point. But in fact, what is going on in these neglectful families is, again, often substance abuse and mental illness. These adults are not aware enough that there is a problem that they don't ask for help because they are frankly out to lunch. They are having drug addiction problems or alcohol addiction problems or mental illness problems and they don't recognize that the heat

is not on in their home in Pittsburgh in the winter. And that's a real problem, but it's not problem that's going to be solved by giving them a housing voucher. How is it possible that child welfare services could know that children are being abused. And yet, they're left in those situations. Why isn't child welfare doing their job? So I think there's a lot of misconception about what child welfare is supposed to be doing. I mean, you actually had some folks, you know, in the federal government who have come out and said things like, you know, the job of child welfare in this country is to ensure the well-being of all families. Like, no, that's not the job.

That's a huge job. I don't think it's the government's job, and it's definitely not the child welfare agency's job. So part of it is just kind of a misunderstanding of the role. I have a working group at the American Enterprise Institute, and we put out a paper recently that was just literally called what child protection is for. Now, I think for most people, they see the words child protection, and they kind of understand what it's for. But so many people in this field have really lost sight of what their real mission is, what their

core mission is. And they're so busy like trying to create well-being and figure out how to make the adults happy and all these other things that they've lost sight of the core mission of protecting children. Do you think that the problems in foster care being, are they being totally ignored by the political left and the right? Or is there one side politically that is taking commendable strides to eradicate these problems? I'm pretty unlawful. unhappy with both sides right now. That's fair. That's fair. I think that, you know, like the left, as we've talked about, like a lot of it is this sort of social justice stuff that is really guiding them and this activism. A lot of politicians and policymakers just don't pay attention to

this issue much. Like maybe there's a high profile case and they try to do something, you know, quickly and like a quick fix. And it doesn't really have a long-term impact. But I feel like the right has really been absent in a lot of these issues. One reason for that, that, you know, I actually, when I first started this topic, I went around to folks I knew who were conservatives and I asked them, you know, what is the broken windows solution to child welfare? Because I think of broken windows as like a great, you know, is a policing solution that really improve the lives of the most vulnerable people in big cities in America. And a lot of them sort of shrugged and didn't have an answer.

But some of them, when they look at the child welfare system, they say, you know, well, this is kind of the result of the breakdown of the American family. and what do you expect? And I think that is totally true, but also totally insufficient. I mean, there are half a million kids in foster care right now. We cannot rewind their lives and put them in intact families and try to remake all of the things that would make them, you know, kind of stable and make them have a good life. So what are we doing from here? The other reason that the right, I think, sort of shies away from this topic, aside from the fact that they don't know a lot about it, is because the left is always saying the solution is more money. And you,

don't want to be kind of like the mean Grinch guy who's like, oh, I don't want to give more money to foster kids. Now, I don't actually, you know, I actually think there are many places we could actually put more financial resources into the system. Like what? I think I think family courts, for instance, are completely overstretched. Like I think we should have more staff, more judges. I mean, you're a CASA. So you see how long these cases get dragged out, how hard it is to find a time. I mean, I cannot tell you, I have been in the process. I finished. So I was a CASA in the state Indiana, then I moved to Arizona, which is where I live now, went through the process to get my training to be able to be Acosta in the state of Arizona. It has taken me about a year and a half

and I still have not met these kids. I have emailed Department of Child Services multiple times and when can I start my case. Nobody's giving me the contact info for my kids to meet them. And I'm just like, do we want to solve these or get these cases moving or what? It's like it's so slow. Yeah, it is. is. I mean, it's a combination of the fact that I think they don't have enough staff. Some of the staff is not very good at their jobs. And some of them really don't have an understanding about how urgent these matters are. I mean, when you have a case that involves like a three-year-old and you say, we're going to put off the next hearing for six months, that's a huge chunk of a child's life that you have just frittered away with your bureaucracy. So I'm happy to put more resources into things

like that. I'm also happy to put more resources into, you know, recruiting a higher quality of caseworkers. So those are things where I definitely think we could be doing this, but I think we need to have smart policies that go along with the added resources. Yeah. One thing you covered in your book, No Way to Treat a Child, which really interested me in particular, was how activists on the left keep advocating to defund the police and that we need to replace them with social workers. Would that be a good idea or bad? I think it would be terrible. I mean, part of the book actually talks about how I wish social workers would act more like the police sometimes. Yes, to explain that because that, I was like, oh, this girl is on fire. So, I mean, I don't think that's true in all cases, but I think people

misunderstand what the job of someone in child protection is, just like they understand, misunderstand what the role of child protection is. So you have these people who go into social work, and a lot of them really think that their job is going to be like putting families back together and making everybody feel good and that it's going to be kind of this nice, you know, warm, fuzzy thing that they're doing. And 40% of folks in some of these agencies is a 40% turnover rate. So I don't think we're preparing them for what the actual job is. And just to give people a sense. I mean, so you have like a 22-year-old, you know, girl, maybe she's just out of college or something like that. And you're asking her to go into maybe a public housing project, go knock on the door, you know, some apartment. She doesn't know who's on the other

side. She's about to go in there and make some pretty damning accusations or at least ask some pretty provocative questions to who's ever on the other side. And at the same time that she's doing that, and probably worried if she's smart about her safety, she's supposed to be looking around the room, trying to gauge how the children are being cared for, whether she sees drug paraphernalia, like what else is going on, whether the mother's boyfriend is there, whether he seems to be influencing how she's answering the questions. I mean, this is really police work in a lot of ways. And so I wish that there were some kind of way that we could actually divert some of the folks who are interested in criminal justice, you know, into this field so that they could, I mean, it's not the exact same thing as what every police person does, but, you know, trying to sort of hone those skills of investigation. And frankly, like, you know, having a sense that I'm here to protect these children, you know, that is really missing.

And so this whole idea that we're going to, you know, replace the folks who are doing policing with social workers, I just, I think is crazy and probably the opposite of what we should be doing in some of these cases. Well, those same activists who are saying, you know, defund the police replaced with social workers are also proposing that we abolish foster care. And so my question for you is if these social justice warriors were to get their way and we saw this come to fruition, what would child welfare in the United States look like? I just, I can't, I cannot even begin to imagine in all sorts of ways. I mean, like I said, they're going to try to, you know, kind of sweep all these problems under the rug. So when you defund the police, the crime wave that happens is very obvious to people. Like, it's a very public thing. It's kind of out on the streets. People are getting in New York where I live, people are getting pushed onto subway tracks. Like, it's a real problem. The murder rate is up. And people really know what it's like to walk around on the cities, you know, streets of New York. when the police are not being, you know, funded properly, when they're not being deployed properly. Child welfare is a much more hidden problem. I'm not saying like we don't know about what's going on, but most people don't see child abuse. They don't see it in the same way they would see street crime. And so what would happen is I think a lot of this stuff would just remain uninvestigated,

unreported, underground, and the children are going to suffer as a result. And I think, But what is their plan? What are these left-wing activist plan to do with these abuse children if it's not foster care? I just, there's so much magical thinking that goes on that side of the debate. I mean, you know, they literally, they've put out a manifesto, and an entire paragraph of the manifesto is devoted to ending poverty. I mean, so you can kind of understand, like, they haven't thought to like the third or the fourth step here. It's like, well, step one, we're just going to end all poverty, and then all the problems will go away.

So I think you're almost giving them too much credit to think that they actually know what's going to happen next. They just don't see these problems as existing. And they think that if the problems do exist, they could just be taken care of with more money, frankly. Who is doing a better job helping abuse kids in our communities? Is it the church, you think, or the state? So, you know, there's always going to be a role for government here. Like, you know, just like there's always going to be a role for the police. But I think where churches and faith-based organizations have just done really the Lord's work, obviously, is that they've really, you know, revolutionized the way we do foster care and adoption in this country. In the last like 15 years or so, it's been quite recent. A number of large megachurches, evangelical churches have really had a few insights that I think we could all benefit from understanding. The first is that putting up a picture of a child on the nightly news and saying,

does anyone want this kid is not a very effective way of recruiting foster parents or adoptive parents, frankly. So a lot of pastors really have started going into their pulpits and into their congregations and saying, these are the six kids who need homes in our zip code tonight. That's a much more urgent, immediate message for people who are really ready to hear it. The second thing that they did is they really changed the way foster parent training is done. Of course, states have to tell you, you know, what are some basic requirements for information that foster parents need to know their regulations. You know, you need to tell them how many fire extinguishers they need in their home. But obviously, foster parents need a lot more than that. And I think

many churches have really started to add a lot to the training, including training and trauma-informed care, which is hugely important. If you're going to take one of these children into your home, you have to understand the kind of things that they've experienced and how that will lead them to act out, how it will lead them to behave. And even if you have raised, you know, three or four children on your own and they're all off at college, like, that is not going to prepare you for what you're about to experience. And the last thing that these institutions, again, you know, some churches, some other faith-based organizations have done is they have really supported foster parents. About half of foster parents quit within the first year. And it's because it's quite an overwhelming experience. It takes a toll on your marriage, on your biological children, on your finances. And so some of these organizations have said, if you want to be a foster parent, you should sign up with like four of your closest friends. And they will also go through training with you. And we will offer them information about what it's like. Then those people can do respite care. Those people can build furniture for you at the last minute. And they can pray for you, frankly, because it's going to be a long journey. And so all of those things have, I think, led to a lot better outcomes for people who become foster parents in

So, you know, usually there's, you know, there's like a, you know, two days worth of training that these people go through. There's background checks. They have to sometimes get letters of recommendation from other people, you know, that people will talk to their, sometimes employers or other people in their community find out how they're with them. But, you know, it's a, it can be a very frustrating process. I mean, after not getting called back, you know, you may find out that foster parent training doesn't start for months. I mean, just like your experience is a CASA, again, you know, you're ready to get started and the state is, you know, nowhere to be found. You know, or they'll have trainings that'll be, you know, three hours away from your home or, you know, at totally inconvenient times. And the state is, you know, the state is the state. It's a bureaucracy. It's not really, you know, interested in customer service.

But frankly, when you have people volunteering to do this kind of work, you know, we should be a lot more interested in customer service. we should be treating, you know, foster parents with great respect because they're doing very hard work that other people are not willing to do. So we shouldn't, you know, have caseworkers who just say like, oh, I'm coming to your house at 10 o'clock tomorrow morning because it's the last day of the month and I have to do my check. You also will get judges who when a foster parent, even someone who's cared for a child for more than a year comes in and a judge will say, I'm not really interested in what the foster parent has to say. they're just a foster parent. And so to that level of disrespect, I just feel like what happens is it discourages, you know, smart, middle class, responsible people from engaging in this because it's so frustrating and you get treated so badly.

Well, with the case that I'm trying to start right now, it just opened over the summer. And I, this is what she said. She goes, well, I don't really know anything. I only went out there a few months ago when the case was. first open, I have not been back since. And that's when people say, well, what does a CASA do? What is important? We are literally, we see these kids a lot of times, the CASA, more than anyone else on the case, which is insane. I'm not even a trained social worker. Yeah. No, absolutely. It is not uncommon for the CASA to be that person to go see the kid, you know, once a week. I mean, again,

you have the foster parents might be seeing them that often, but again, their thoughts are just dismissed in the courtroom. Right. So yeah, the CASA is the person who, you know, who's really supposed to in court represent the best interest of the child. And there's actually, I hesitate to tell you it, but there's actually a move now among some CASA organizations to refocus the role of CASA, again, not on the best interests of children, but on the best interest of the family. And I think, well, if that happens, I don't even know then. I mean, what do you think? If that happens, should I even continue doing this volunteer work? Should other CASAs continue, if that's where they change things?

I, you know, each CASA organization is kind of run on its own. And so I'm just telling you kind of that's what the national CASA people are saying right now. But I really think that people who are involved in CASA should start pushing back on this and saying, that is not our job. Our job here is solely to represent the interests of the children. And sometimes even to represent the interests of a particular child. Like, you could have two siblings who have different needs. And it doesn't, and you can't.

And you can't always say that they actually have to be, you know, that they're going to benefit from the same placement at the same time. And so I really think folks in CASA should be aware of this activism coming into their organizations and sort of put a stop to it. Like I think a lot of people don't understand, you know, we have an adversarial court system in this country, not because we're mean. It's because we think that every person in that courtroom, you know, deserves a voice and deserves to have representation.

It's true in family court. Every one of those children deserves to have their voice heard. And the adults in the courtroom, even inarticulate adults, are much more articulate than children. And they're able to have their voices heard and who is going to represent the voices of children? You did not cover this in the book, but I am curious. Do you know if there is any discrimination happening against conservative or Christian couples who are wanting to become foster parents? So it's happening in a kind of, I think, backhanded sort of way. So one thing that you see now in some states are regulations like California has said, if you're a foster parent and not willing to support

your foster child's gender transitioning, then we don't think you should be a foster parent. So they're not like right out saying like, you know, we don't want conservatives. But surely if you're a foster parent, you know, who has kind of traditional views on gender, even if you're not an evangelical Christian and you just think, no, actually, you know, gender is not just a social construct, you know, that you're being discouraged from going into that. And there are all sorts of ways that I think the left is trying to use the foster care system to engage in this kind of manipulation. Michigan at one point had a law that said, if you have a licensed gun in your home, even if it is completely locked up, you're not qualified to be a foster parent. So there are

ways that they're sort of trying to really influence who can become a foster parent by using these political hot button issues. Now, I know that your book doesn't have to do the abortion or anything. I'm not going to ask you to get into that or your views or anything, but I am curious. Pro-choice activists or advocates, I should say, especially like to bring up just this narrative that children that end up in foster care are more likely to have negative outcomes in life. So I was just wondering if you could speak on that, just like, how true is that? That if a kid is in foster care, their life is pretty much ruined. So I don't think their life is ruined. I think, you know, first of all, there's a kind of confusion about correlation and causation. So kids who end up in foster care, it's not that the foster care system has necessarily ruined them. All of the things that led up to that point are also playing a role in their outcomes in life. But it is true that children who have experienced that and then been through the foster care system are more likely to end up, you know, in the criminal justice system. They're more likely to end up homeless or using drugs or.

or even sex traffic. So, I mean, there are very bad outcomes for kids in the system. And I think what we need to be asking ourselves is kind of what can we do to stop some of those outcomes? And unfortunately, one of the things that we really have to do is ensure that kids spend as little time as possible in the system and as little time as possible in homes where parents are abusing and neglecting them. And sometimes that means, you know, really cutting things off early.

I mean, Arizona has passed a law, which I think now Georgia has followed, and I think it's very important. It says that if a baby has been born substance exposed, that the mother only has a year to kind of clean up her act. So it's actually even a tighter timeline than the timeline provided by the federal government. And I think that's very reasonable because those years, those zero to three years are so important for a child's brain development and other kinds of development that we need to sort of be making sure that, a parent is really, really working to rehabilitate and actually making progress in order to not, you know, keep that child just waiting forever in the system. But that's the thing. Why are some of these kids, when it comes to family court, left in these neglectful situations

to just bounce around the court for years? Why isn't the process to close a child's case faster? Again, it's people feeling sorry for the adults. It's a sense that you're using. these kids. The kids are used as like tools. They're tools to either, they're either carrots or sticks to help the parents on their road to recovery or to punish the interests of their family. Like, are they going to be able to manage? And so what happens is, as you know, once you let these cases go on indefinitely, even if we do eventually sever parental rights, you know, that child has

now experienced such a high amount of trauma. It is very hard for them to find a foster, foster home or adoptive home that will take them because they have such behavioral and mental health challenges. And we've even made it harder to find, you know, placements for them, even in, like, you know, psychiatric facilities now. The federal funding has put the squeeze on a lot of these facilities that some kids need, even if it's not permanent, but they need them in order to experience the rehabilitation after all the trauma they've experienced. But you have, you know, folks in Washington and were like, oh, all these congregate care places, they're all abusive and we should shut them all down. Well, you know, guess what? Texas had 400 kids sleeping in offices this year. So where are you

going to put them? Again, magical thinking. Like you just imagine these kids are going to be fine with their mother, the grandmother, and everything's going to turn out well. And then you get kids sleeping in offices. All right. So what steps can we be taking to overhaul the foster care system and make positive changes? What do we need to be doing? What policies do we need to be voting for? or tell us? Sure. Well, I think at the federal level, there are these two laws we've just talked about, the Adoption Safe Families Act, which really tries to enforce these timelines.

We are flouting those laws, and I think everyone should encourage their states to really take a hard look at whether they are operating on the timelines of kids that are federally mandated. And if they're not, you know, the governor, the legislature should really start to crack down on the child welfare agency. The second policy, again, multi-ethnic placement act, it says, We cannot discriminate based on race. I think, again, it is time for people who care about this issue at the state level to say,

this is a federal law that I know you are not following and I am tired of it. And we are going to ensure that the child welfare agency follows the rules. In terms of policies that are happening at the state level, the recruitment of foster families, ensuring that your state is doing everything they can to recruit quality foster families, treat those families well. One of the great parts I think about the CASA program is not just that you're representing the best interests of children, but that you're a set of eyes in that courtroom. You would be amazed at the number of foster families that described family court to me as a, you know, as like a kangaroo court, that they don't understand even what laws are supposed to be followed. And just to have another kind of responsible citizen in the room being like, hey, I'm watching what's going on and you can't just get away with anything. So that's a great way to get involved. But then I I think we really need to find ways as citizens to support foster families, you know, to get involved, whether it's a faith-based organization or not. If there are people fostering in your community,

not everyone is going to foster, but there are all these other roles that you can play in ensuring the success of good foster families. And so I would encourage people to explore those too. What are some of those to help other foster families in your community if you yourself are not feeling called to become a foster parent? Sure. I mean, you can be respite care. I mean, a lot of times Like a foster family might just need like a couple might need a night out. And it's really hard. You can't just necessarily hire the babysitter down the street to deal with a child who's experience severe trauma.

You need somebody who's qualified to do that. Even, you know, people who just understand what foster care is and can help you, bring over meals or do sorts of, you know, help you driving kids to all the different appointments that are much lower level things. There's a, you know, there's an app called Care Portal that a lot of state. have where you can just sign up your church community to provide material goods. Like if a foster family, you know, takes in a young child, you can say, come to us and we will provide you with a car seat or a stroller at the last minute or help you put together a crib. So, you know, like I said,

those are low-level things, but often they actually serve as kind of an on-ramp for families to get more involved in foster care, kind of exposing them to what the system is like so that it doesn't have to be like an all or nothing approach. Naomi Schaefer Riley, I love you so freaking much. I just cannot tell you like you, Abigail Shrier, who I've had on the podcast, you guys have written in my opinion. I sincerely meet this and I am such a reader. I read a lot of stuff.

I think that, you know, her book, the transgender crazy seducing our daughters, your book, I feel like are some of the most important books that have been written in the last decade. And so I highly encourage everyone to read. Please tell everyone the name of your book, where they can. get it and where they can find more out about you. Sure. The book is called No Way to Treat a Child. You can get it on Amazon or your local bookstore. I'm a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and you can go to the AEI.org website and read a lot of the articles that I've written about this. We also host panels and events of experts to come talk about all sorts of issues from aging out

of foster care to how to do child protection better. And I just encourage you to reach out to me if you have any questions about how you can start to fix things. Thank you so much for coming on the spillover. Thank you. Wow. See, this is where the left just has no idea what it's talking about when it makes sweeping statements about abolishing a system in the name of progress or some other social justice initiative. Issues, especially issues dealing with children, are highly complex. We need to be having conversations like this so that we can have a better grasp of what actual solutions can look like. And solutions aren't just feeling sorry for something and agreeing to destroy something. Solutions come with actions and perspective. I'm so grateful for people like Naomi

who dedicate their lives to actually helping children rather than complaining about the system or perpetuating the problem without acknowledging who the actual victims are. If you want to know more, I highly recommend reading her latest book, No Way to Treat a Child, how the foster care system, family courts, and racial activists are wrecking young lives or get involved with an organization like Casa where you can begin to make a bigger impact in your community. To stay in the know on important social conversations like this, click that subscribe button. Make sure you're following the podcast

because I have more of the spillover coming your way next week. This train never slows down, baby. And I have a feeling you're not going to want to miss this. Maybe because it's going to be our first celebrity guest. Uh-huh. Yeah, tell the world, aka tell big tech, how much you love this content by leaving. a five-star review that's important every single week. You don't got to write me a novel.

Just tell me what you love so far about The Spillover or what you loved in particular about this particular episode. And then share this podcast with a friend so that he or she can know the T surrounding the family court system and the foster care system. New episodes drop every Thursday at 9 p.m. Pacific, midnight eastern. My name is Alex Clark. This is the Spillover. Love you. Mean it. Bye.