Nobody Should Believe Me - Inside the Child Welfare System with Dr. Anu Partap Part 1

Episode Date: July 23, 2026

Dr. Anu Partap has spent decades caring for children and families at the intersection of medicine and child welfare. In this first part of Andrea's conversation with the foster care pediatrician, they explore what actually happens when children enter foster care, why reunification—not permanent separation—is the goal in most cases, and how trauma, poverty, and abuse create far more complex realities than the public often sees. *** Try out Andrea’s Podcaster Coaching App: https://studio.com/apps/andrea/podcaster Order Andrea’s book The Mother Next Door: Medicine, Deception, and Munchausen by Proxy: https://read.macmillan.com/lp/the-mother-next-door-9781250284273/ View our sponsors: https://www.nobodyshouldbelieveme.com/sponsors/ Remember that using our codes helps advertisers know you’re listening and helps us keep making the show!   Subscribe on YouTube where we have bonus content: https://www.youtube.com/@NobodyShouldBelieveMePod Follow Andrea on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreadunlop/ Buy Andrea's books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Andrea-Dunlop/author/B005VFWJPI For more information and resources on Munchausen by Proxy, please visit: https://www.munchausensupport.com/ The American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children’s MBP Practice Guidelines: https://apsac.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Munchausen-by-Proxy-Clinical-and-Case-Management-Guidance-.pdf Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

True Story Media. Hello, it's Andrea, and today we are sharing my conversation with foster care pediatrician, Dr. Anou Partap. Dr. Partap has spent nearly three decades as a pediatrician and medical director inside large health systems from 1998 until just last year when she went out on her own. Over the course of her career, she's launched more than a dozen clinics and programs across two states, all aimed at supporting families living with limited income, limited resources, or family violence. In Arizona, she launched the state's first domestic violence program for children,

its first family learning center embedded in an outpatient clinic, and new models for screening families for domestic violence in health care settings. In Texas, she helped build the largest integrated health care center for children in foster care, launching the first 24-7 crisis texting line focused on safety and basic needs, and expanding access to free pediatric care. On the policy front, Dr. Partap helped push through a Texas-request-referral. the children entering foster care receive an early healthcare visit, a direct response to kids falling through the cracks and experiencing unsafe delays in treatment. She also helped introduce multidisciplinary case reviews so systems could catch near misses

before they became something worse. That review process has unfortunately been discontinued, but the early visit requirement stands. We're so grateful to Dr. Partap for coming on and helping us deepen our understanding of these complex systems. As always, if you have questions for us, feedback, or episode topics you'd like us to cover, we'd love to hear from you at hello at nobody should believe me.com. We'll be right back. Legendary has arrived in Alberta with BetMGM Casino.

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Hi, it's so good to see you again. Yeah, it's good to see you again, too. Thank you so much for doing this with us. So to start with, you know, you and I met through the Helfer Society. And when I was chatting with you, I had never spoken to a foster care pediatrician before. and was not aware that that existed as a subspecialty. And so I just immediately thought, oh, this would be such a wonderful perspective for so many of the things that we're talking about on the show, especially after season seven where we really dug into a lot of these bigger, broader questions surrounding child welfare. And so we're so happy to have you with us.

Can you start by just explaining who you are and what you do? Oh, sure. And thank you for including foster care as a focus on your podcast. It reaches a lot of people. And so I'm excited to share lessons and insights from a personal perspective. So I'm a primary care of pediatrician and have spent about half my time really focused on how do we support families who have limited income, who may be struggling with life situations like domestic violence or other hardships. And from that, I, after a few years of being a general pediatrician and doing some systems work, became a full-time foster care pediatrician from 2009 to 2018. And then moved back into prevention and early intervention and then got to do some more systems work in the foster care space.

And in working with families who have lots of speed bumps ahead of them and roadblocks ahead of them, they still do so much for their children. constantly, constantly putting their kids first, somehow making things work. The whole like Ginger Rogers backwards and high heels like that, that's how I would describe the families I met. And then when I went into full-time foster care, it was in Texas and the North Texas area, I was sort of stunned at this whole world of foster care that I was not aware of until I was immersed in it. And what I learned from the families, especially our kids and across all ages, child welfare workers who are doing their best, judges, attorneys, CASAs, I think everyone who touches that system, I think it really changed how I see, how we treat trauma, how we try to move upstream, how we support families.

I think foster care timeframe really showed me this is what happens when all systems fail. And so how do we do a much better job of supporting families and children? Yeah. Well, that's a great introduction. And I feel like there's so much to unpack in everything you just said. I want to start with a clarifying question. When you say systems work, what does that refer to exactly? So my heart has always been in how do we connect the dots between all these fabulous systems of care we have

so that when families are moving through life, they interact with the supports they need when they need them. And I think we build these great puzzle pieces, but they're not necessarily connected. So a lot of my time in pediatrics, about half my time in pediatricers has been spent either looking at, well, what service don't we have yet? Or what service do we have, but it's not supporting families in shelter or families in the ER or families in primary care or in schools or childcare? Or we don't have a policy that supports what families need. So how do we look at the policies or funding? But really it's that kind of day-to-day.

life perspective, how do all these systems interact, intersect? And my focus is really around like to mitigate, reduce, or prevent the impact of traumatic stress on children's health. One of the sort of core things that I wanted to talk to you about is the more I have learned about child welfare systems as a whole, which is an area that I still feel very new to, I think it's just one of those spaces where there's sort of complexity upon complexity upon complexity. And I think it has made me sort of suspicious of anyone that sort of describes things in any kind of black and white terms. And I think there is a generally, I think, sort of negative view of foster care, I would say, just by general people walking around,

sort of wherever you fall on the political spectrum. Like, I think there just is this sort of like foster care is something that people automatically associate. with tragedy, and probably rightfully so, right, because something happened for a child to end up there that is obviously going to be traumatic sort of just by its nature. But I wonder from your perspective, where I think that idea goes sideways, is this sense that a child is always better off with their biological parents. And I think that that is an idea that exists on the far right and on the far left of the political spectrum. And that's where I've sort of encountered it, right? And this like sort of mandate for like reunification above all else. And that I think is very much in tension with many of the

situation in my family, the situation that I've encountered with a lot of talking to a lot of other family members and survivors and just a lot of these other cases that I look at. And so I wonder if you can sort of help us just have a better framing of how to look at situations where a child is removed from their family of origin. Yeah, no, it's exactly the right question to start with. I think what struck me when I started doing foster care was these kiddos have been rescued for the sake of their family. And I think this notion that people want to take your child forever is really the most important perspective to just dismantle completely. Nobody wants to take somebody's child in 2026. There's history where we did those things. They're terrible. They're tragic. They're real.

They can't ever be forgotten. We did it to certain communities. And we should never forget that that risk is always there. That's not where we are today in 2026. So what I saw even back in 2010 to 2018 was that every child I met in North Texas foster care, and they came from all over the state, was lucky to have been rescued so that their family had a chance to be the family they were meant to be, and for this child to be the child they were meant to be when they were born. I think when families rightfully are upset, angry, feel, cheated, feel an injustice to it, I think in that moment, that makes sense. but when you are really distressed, when drugs have really robbed you who you are as a parent,

when the domestic violence in your home is leading to serious harm to you and your children, everyone needs a pause. And you need a pause that sometimes is forced because whatever has happened is already affecting the health and safety of your child. So the bar for someone for the state to come in and say, we're going to take your child out of your care and place them with somebody else. That bar in my experience is incredibly high. And when children enter care, the vast majority of the plan for that child, like the actual service plan, is for that child to go back home.

So you have this golden period of time once everyone's rage can come down, the services can come in place. you've been given as a gift of belief and time and hope to become a family again. And that is what I saw over and over and over. I think that is actually a place that I'd love to expand because I think there has been so much misleading media coverage around particularly separations that happen because of abuse and because of abuse that is severe enough to land a child in the hospital. That's exclusively sort of what we cover on the show. And I want to sort of distinguish between and sort of set some realistic, like what you have seen throughout your career in terms of when it is safe for a child to go back home or in the best interest of a child to go back home and when it is not. That's a like very challenging question. And I think that that's why I think part of what is driving these media narratives and when I look at, you know, work like my Kigsmanbaugh that his primary case that he covered, his first case that he

covered in the ones that were featured in the podcast happened in Texas. So that's very much in your backyard. And I think there is this knee-jerk response to say either this parent is innocent and it was a wrongful accusation and therefore they should be reunited with their child or they're guilty and they should have their child taken away. And I think the really uncomfortable truth for a lot of people, but the truth that everyone who works within the system is familiar with is that it is not that simple. And there are nuances within that and that this really is sort of like an individual thing with families. And I think what the most striking example I saw of this, you know, which I talked about last season, right, is like when you look at these sort of like two media stories up against

each other, you look at these families that I was following and the people who are in fractured families and were in take care of Maya and these other media stories who are being presented as falsely accused, you would see the initial media coverage of their arrest, right? So that's just the local story, their mugshot on the news, and the description of basically, usually what was in the police report or the arrest warrant affidavit or what have you. So just kind of the details of what, of the crime. And the commentary and sort of the way that the public absorbs those stories is throw this person off a bridge, lock them away forever. And then when that same story is represented through the lens of this person was falsely accused, then everyone's mad at the

doctor and, oh, how could they falsely accuse these parents? And I just, thought that it sort of was the perfect encapsulation of this dissonance that we have, right, where it's like we need it to be black and white. We need it there to be either this is a bad parent who heard a child or this is a good parent who had never heard a child. And I just don't think that reflects reality. And so I wonder for you, what were the circumstances where people had children temporarily removed? So it was something serious enough to remove the children. but where they were, in your opinion, safely and successfully reunified, like where it was a reunification where you're like, that was the right call. That was what was best for the child and the family.

There are so many stories like that. And I think, you know, you said this already, but whenever it's black and white, then you know that's not the story. And foster care is a 24-7 emergency response and very private system of care that protects children that we never really talk about. And I think the most stunning part of foster care is that both the beauty and the pain and the hardships and the things that don't go the way we want are rarely discussed publicly. So I'm going to describe like some families I can think of, but I also want to highlight, we just had two deaths of infants who were engaged in our foster care system. system. They were publicly reported on. There's a court document describing a little bit about

what happened, but it reminds us that for every success, there's a reason this system is complex and needs to constantly be improved upon. And those children died in foster care or they died? Our families were engaged with our Texas foster care system at the time that they died. And it led to a massive response from the state and from the courts. It was taken the way that it needed to be taken very seriously. Just to clarify, so these two children, these two cases that you're talking about, so they died under the care of foster parents or they died under the care of their biological parents? They died while their cases were engaged in the foster care system. So the families had had their children placed in foster care. And so a foster care case is really the entire family,

It's the family of origin, all the children involved in that home, the children who are still in their home, the children who are placed in somebody else's care all the way until the children go back home, the reunification. So we had two infants in separate cases that died during the process of reunification from foster care. So they were sent back to their biological parents? And the cases were still open at the time. Okay. And so I think, but I say that because when you hear good outcomes, we have to picture how much it takes for everyone who's on the ground working with families. So one of the first stories I thought it was, like I had a, and HIPAA's very necessary privacy, so I will change obviously the details of the stories, but young children were seriously affected with their health and safety,

were extremely underweight for their ages and entered care to a family who was really open for adoption. Now, when you're open for adoption, there's still a long road between fostering children who enter your home until you can go into adoption. But the truth is in this case, everyone was so upset about the condition of these kiddos that there was sort of an assumption early on that there's no way we would send these kids back. we don't make those decisions in pediatrics. All we're there to do is support the recovery and the ongoing growth and these their childhood. While they're in foster care, they're just trying to grow up and become children, right?

They're just growing up during childhood while this legal case is going on. After about a year, these kids had gone from being very developmentally delayed, very underweight to these adorable kids who are like singing in clinic, dancing on the exam table, connected with their caseworkers and their family and the clinic. And probably we were more connected to them than they felt towards us. But, you know, it was just like always fun to see them and to see their success. And we heard that the decision was made for them to reunify. We'd never met the family. Our job, again, is we don't weigh in on as pediatrics. I mean, in primary care, especially, we have no opinion around who should raise children. We know that if you choose to take

this sacred task on, here's what they need from you. And we asked if we could work with the family before reunification because the children that were taken out of their home were different than the ones a year later. And so the courts agreed for us to do visits with the family before the children were unified. And over a course of several weeks, we watched this couple really changed from being kind of angry about being there, right? These are their kids, like, why are we trying to tell them what they need to do, to prompting each other to ask questions, writing things down, being really cute with their engagement, with their kiddos, very actively participating and planning for how to be the best parents they could for the children they'd always loved, but had hardships that kept them

from being the parents they were meant to be. And towards the end, we were able to really say, based on the needs of these children at this stage in their lives, the parents were able to describe that they can meet their needs. Now, again, we don't decide what happens. The courts decide what will happen. And what happened right before reunification was one of the parents passed away. And it was, I still remember the day we got that call. It was so upsetting because, A, we'd all formed a connection, but just to know that these kids have now lost someone who was so very, ready to receive. But we had that connection and plan so that we could now pivot. How do we help now this single parent through a time of grief and loss and hardship embrace these two kiddos?

And again, could plan as a family who all could participate in helping raise these children. And those children did get to go back to their family. And that story is a wonderful story and it's not an isolated story. What it does highlight, though, is the creative courage. of child welfare and courts and attorneys to support families in reassuming care and custody of their children. It also reminds us that by rallying together and making sure that their health and safety needs can be met at the same time, we're positioning everyone for lifelong success. And I think that latter part is what makes foster care pediatrics unique and isn't necessarily hardwired into our current system of foster care.

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sponsors is a great way to support the show. I think one of the things that's so dangerous about a lot of the media coverage that I've talked about that's been very focused on medical kidnapping, right? And sort of like the doctors being this antagonistic force is that we all need to be able to trust our children's doctors and our own doctors. And like, that's so important. And there are situations where doctors are not good doctors and they're not trustworthy and people have bad experience. And those things happen. But creating that distrust unnecessarily in a situation where it's not warranted, which I think describes all of the cases I've looked at that were described as medical kidnapping, is really dangerous because it creates

just this like, and that's something that, you know, I think has been doctors across the country are experiencing, just parents being skeptical and mistrustful of everything from vaccines to vitamin K treatments after birth and just these things that like are so basic and that we're so sort of these, you know, things that have so improved children's. lives and well-being and the ability to eradicated childhood diseases that are coming back. And it's just, it's really like that mistrust. I think we are already seeing the horrible consequences of that. And I would assume that in foster care pediatrics, like what you're sort of describing with this family, that there's like an additional hurdle there of they're

probably going to be understandably, like sort of mistrustful of anyone who's an outside person who's sort of a mandated reporter, and I think that's one of the, I think, decently sort of salient critiques of the abolitionists that there is this sort of antagonism that's kind of built into these systems where the people who they're supposed to be leaning on for support are also the people who are sort of surveilling them. And obviously, you know, in many of those situations like that, surveillance is warranted because we're looking out for the child who is vulnerable and can't speak for themselves. But I understand where there's, where there's some real tension there. So how is that something that you navigate in your field

coming into these people's lives who may already sort of have their backup? You know, it doesn't bother me. And I'll tell you why. It's like I'm so focused on I'm here to help you in your role as a parent, whether you think I'm here for that or not. And that strong central core that we are here as partners is unwavering. If the people, parent doesn't feel like they're in partnership with us. We have to respect that they don't feel that way, but doesn't change how we position ourselves. There is no good way to raise a child with love, healthy, and health and safety, unless us in partnership with the people raising the child. We are a brief moment in time. And I think this almost fixation on the power of the medical

community, it's confusing for me because we don't really feel any power as pediatricians. had this very somewhat mundane but calling, which is let's make sure your child is healthy and safe through childhood to get into adulthood. And the rest of this chaos and confusion and noise, let's help you through that chaos, confusion, and noise. Because our only focus is that your child is healthy and safe through childhood, that there's some joy, that they learn, that they become the person you picture them to be. When you look at the reports to CPS hotly, lines across the country. There's like over four million calls. And then you look at the number that are screened in or screened out and like over half of them are screened out. About 47% are screened in.

The medical community makes up only 11% of all calls that were actually screened in. It's law enforcement and teachers that make the bulk of the phone calls of CPS that are actually screened in. Out of all those like two million, right, it was in the last reporting year, 100,000 kids entered foster care, incredibly small. So by the time you get down to the very small population, relatively speaking, that's still 100,000 too many, right? And it's actually a little bit higher than that because siblings come into the picture. There's something inherently different at that point that we had to rescue children from this home. situation so that nothing worse would happen to them. And to deny that is something that the family needs to really discuss with the courts or discuss with the attorneys or discuss with child welfare

workers. But it's not physicians or nurses that are taking children away from them. It's a system of care designed to protect children from something worse happening to them. In the meantime, foster care, pediatrics, or just any physician, nurse, practitioner, therapist, psychiatrists, whoever the medical professional is. Our role while that child is in foster care is to help them recover from what's happened because we know that the circumstances for removal scientifically mean that it has affected some aspect of your health and probably multiple domains of your health. So let's help you get better. Let's make sure that the people who are moving you from home to home or you have visits every week or the caregivers that are raising you

are positioned to understand how you might be reacting as a child during this really unusual circumstance at a legal case. You're growing up during a legal case. How do we mitigate the risks of the legal case on your childhood? And how do we position you for a beautiful permanency? That's the only three goals, right? Treat you, treat what's happened, mitigate the risks of the legal system itself and then help you end up in a beautiful forever family. And so the anger and the suspicion and the accusations, I mean, I understand where it's coming from, but I think it's really important to understand how much noise that is and stay focused on our calling in the task at hand. Yeah, it's so interesting that you say that because I think one of the sort of most ridiculous

details that shows up consistently in this sort of medical kidnapping story beats, right? Because that's kind of what I dug into in the last season. It's like, oh, every single one of these stories sounds the same. And it's because they're being constructed in a certain way, not because they actually have these things in common. This is not evidence of a conspiracy theory or of a conspiracy. And one of the things is this idea that, like, you know, you see these doctors, Sally Smith and Dr. Deborah Jensen and Dr. Nancy Harper. And they're sort of all described the same way. And this sort of, oh, they just came in and they said it was abuse and they yelled and they didn't introduce themselves. And it's like, number one, you know, I've met some of these people and

that was not, it's sort of, you don't buy it the minute you sort of meet them. And two of their cases, I know their former boss. And also like child abuse pediatricians are some of the most unflappable people that you'll probably ever meet. Right. Like these are in my experience, people who are used to very high stress situations. They are used to seeing people in their worst moments. I mean, same thing with the, you know, ER physicians and people who work in PED's ICU. It's like, these are not people who are going to be, like, just by nature of their work, not to say that none of them ever have done any of these things, but like the sort of picture they paint of them as these sort of antagonistic, it's just like, that just doesn't track with reality because they are used to it. They are used to

parents having high emotions. They are used to being in tense situations. And I think, you know, when I have asked child abuse pediatricians sort of about why they sort of felt called to this part of the profession, which is, I think, just, you know, one of the hardest jobs. And I think your job is very much adjacent, right? I'm just seeing kids suffering in a way that most people would just like to spend most of their lives not thinking about, I think, is partly because they can withstand that, because they're not scared off by those sets of circumstances. And, And so I think what you're saying just really resonates with me as being like, well, yeah, like, obviously parents are going to be having a whole bunch of feelings and just remain focused on the child. And that is what I've heard sort of from people in this sort of field writ large. Yeah. And I think I have to respect the tantrum. And then let's get back to the task at hand, which is we both share a goal that your child needs to be the best person that they were meant to be. And we can debate and,

argue about why your child is injured, has bruises, has broken bones, was sexually abused for a prolonged period of time, was left alone in their home for several weeks with a five-year-old in charge of two younger siblings, why there's cockroaches coming out of your diaper bag and infesting their crib. We can argue about why their younger sibling was carried around and a carrier already passed away while you are still doing drugs. We can debate and argue and spend all day on that, but when we're done, let's get back to making sure your child heals. And so it really is noise. There is an unfortunate drive to stop feeling like they're in trouble. And if there's parents who need to spend a lot of time there, that's a choice they make, but they are exchanging

that for getting back to raising their child. And the parents that are able to make that shift, the ones that are able to receive the help they need, either make peace with being wronged if that's where they stay, or make peace with, I wasn't who I was supposed to be for my child and I'm going to now, no matter how hard it is. They're the ones who we really see successful reunification with. And the family is really when they can expand their social support and not be locked in shame and denial. Because partly what has to happen is you have to be willing to acknowledge what happened and ask for help. But if you can never acknowledge what happened, you're not going to ask for help. Frozen lasagna, medium power, 15 minutes. Sounds like Ojo time. Let's play. Feel the fun with

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revenge, frankly, that that is certainly not helping them. Like, I think that's really where I sort of came down, especially after talking to, obviously, John Stewart at length in our seventh season and looking at these cases like Viviana Graham, who just is still just 10 years almost since her case. John's case, it has been 10 years, and they're just still stuck in this loop of anger and wanting to just destroy the reputation of the person who they are scapegoating for what happened. And it doesn't seem like there's ever any, you know, reflection on any of it. And you just think that can't be good. I mean, that can't be good for anyone. And that can't be healing and helpful to moving

forward. And I think, like, that's what is so concerning about these affinity groups. like fractured families is these people are not, even if they see themselves as helping each other, and even if they sort of get what they ostensibly want, right? Even if they get their children back, they find some expert to come say it was rickets or some other nonsense. And then that's effective in court and they get their kids back. It's like they did not benefit from that situation in the long term, I don't think. Because yes, maybe they got what they wanted.

like I wonder about their ability to process the harm that they've caused if they're just surrounded in this echo chamber of like you were wronged, we were all wronged, the media is telling you where you wronged. It's sort of like, yes, I'm sure that that feels validating in the moment when it's happening. But like where does that leave that person? Like I felt that when I was talking to John because he is a grievance machine and he's been in the media. He got very sympathetic treatment in the media. He was presented in a Netflix film as a wronged parent. And it's like, okay, like, you did not go to prison. You got your licks in with Sally Smith. Like, Sally Smith had her reputation completely trashed. Ostensibly, these are the things that you wanted to happen. And

you are not satisfied with that. And I think you will never be satisfied with anything because you're just stuck in this loop. And I just, I just had this impression that was like very haunting. talking to him for, you know, I was on the phone with him for three hours. And then, you know, got these emails from him and just was just sort of this relentless cycle of like, I have to just keep proving that I was wronged and I have to prove it to, it's like, and the, you know, the big mystery of why he reached out to me, never been solved. But it's sort of like, are you just going to keep this grievance loop up for the rest of your life? And so I think it's like, it's doing, sort of almost maybe paradoxically, these families that are

are featured in these stories, I think it's doing them just as much harm as the doctors whose, I mean, reputations are trashed. Even if it's, even if it's more obvious, the sort of other harm that it's doing, I'm like, I don't think it's helping any of these people to give them this framework. The vast majority of parents whose children temporarily come into foster care or longer or even whose parental rights were terminated, you'll never hear from the majority of them. So we had 500,000 children at some point in the foster care system in the last reporting year. And you can count the number of families who are out there talking to the media about what's happened to them. The vast majority of families have children who have gone through this tragedy and have come out in some other situation.

Either they have done the hard work, they've recovered themselves so they can be the parent and their child is also. so receiving really life-safing medical treatment or mental health treatment, usually an integrated care treatment, hopefully. And then they get to be a family again. But a healthier family and a functional family, and a family they can be proud of. And what I love about that is the majority of families involved in the foster care system, their goal is for children to have a loving family. That's the goal of judges, attorneys, CASA, foster parents, children, they want to go. back home. Some of them think of other families, but you rarely run into the family who are the ones that you end up hearing about in media. They are the rare family who are locked in to feeling

not just wrong, but that is the only focus of their experience. I think what, you know, you brought up vitamin K and immunizations. I think there's this, the underpinning is in pediatric we've been experiencing some hammer or another for over a decade. And it started before COVID. But the topic changes. And so it tends to feel like the goal is really about a nebulous goal for power. And we are a target that there is a amplified power placed upon us that we don't feel. You know, it's just, I don't even mean to laugh because I don't mean to be insensitive.

It's just so bizarre, the amount of pretend power that is placed upon the medical profession. And I think the risk has been that you can gather up energy right around these false narratives. And then people who are like really reasonable good people get caught up because they saw it on TV and it has to be true. They read it somewhere and it has to be true. And what I would ask is like if everyone just paused and said, you know, if you have a rough personal experience, and I include the medical profession in this, if we did something wrong, we need people to help us be the best we can be. That's what our quality and safety systems are set up to do. If my police officer in my tiny town doesn't do something I like, then I just call them, I'm like, hey, this is what happened. And I think y'all might want to look into this, right?

We all need feedback and serious feedback and accountability to be better. But to say, my personal experience means we should dismantle a system of safety for 73 million children is inherently wrong and immoral. Your personal experience is important and it is personal and you should pursue that path in a way that is going to help all other families and children. And I think if I hadn't been involved with foster care as deeply as I have been, I wouldn't be able to confidently say it is intended to be a beautiful system of safety for families and the belief of families. And when we don't get it right, we have to unrelentantly be better. When we get it right, I wish we could celebrate it.

And unfortunately, because it's foster care, you don't get to hear those stories, right? But anyway, I hope that may finish. Yeah, no, it does. And I think it's interesting to look at, you know, obviously I've been examining these compendiums of like falsely accused parents, allegedly falsely accused parents. And every time I have been able to examine a case in depth because I have access to the records or what have you, it just so clearly wasn't a false accusation of abuse. It just the medical reason they're trying to give for, as an explanation for the injury,

just flat out does not make any sense. It's completely unscientific. And even if it were not, to your point, right, like, I wonder, as we're looking at this from like a systemic issue, right? It's like, well, do we have to prove that a doctor has never made an error in order to still have doctors examine abused children? It's like, I don't think, you know, when there are these stories about, you know, let's say Sally Smith, because that's the one I've, you know, looked at the most of her cases in depth, but it's like, okay, so say she was wrong once. I mean, nobody's presented a case where she made an error that actually held up, right? These stories about her that have been covered in the news. And I'm not saying Sally Smith's never made an error

in her career. I want to be clear. But like, okay, so say she did get one wrong call out of like how many or say, you know, yeah, there's, I mean, because of course there are, right? Of course there are doctors who make wrong calls. But like, is that a reason to dismantle an entire system? It's like I think the myopia that sort of drives me nuts is like you're saying, well, this system is harmful, so let's get rid of it. Well, like, but having no system is also extremely harmful. And so there isn't like a solid answer. And I will say like, you know, I've been chewing on my conversations with this abolitionist

and especially Professor Alan Detloff since I had it. There are many of his points in historical contexts that I found really helpful. And as you were saying, right, like this is not. not without historical precedents. We have had removal projects, as it were, that were deeply immoral and were wrong and that history exists. But what I sort of can never get an answer to from any of these folks, whether it be the medical kidnapping people or the abolitionists, is, well, what should we do instead? What is the system that replaces this? And I think, you know, the answer I got from Allen and that seems to be pretty central to the abolitionist argument

is when I really wanted to unpack with you because they sort of tie it to a resource question and that I think there's a salient point in there, but it's also like the data is extremely complicated and it certainly is not applicable in all cases. And certainly like my family had plenty of resources and everything that happened still happened. And like there's some real things to unpack around there. And so what I wanted to ask you about is there's a statistic that we hear a lot in these child welfare conversations. 76% of children who are removed are removed due to neglect. And I think a lot of people hearing that sort of think like neglect, resource problem, right? And it's not quite that simple. Number one, neglect is this very complex designation and it's a legal

designation. It's not a medical or social designation. And there are many cases that I've looked at. There were abusive head trauma cases in particular or much as my practice cases that by the they ended up in the courts got pled down to neglect. Neglect is not an accurate description of what happened to that child and what that child experienced. So I have many questions about sort of the meta-analysis of that 76%. But I did want to talk to you about this sort of like the specter that's put out there is, oh, you have a parent who is trying their very best and just doesn't have access to resources, doesn't have access to proper medical care, is just dealing with life circumstances that have made them unable to provide what the state thinks they should provide

for that child. And I'm sure that does happen. But I just wonder, like, when we say neglect, like, help us talk, like, talk us through what neglect means in cases of kids that are removed. Like, what is that bar? What does that look like? No, it's a really important question. And I'm glad we're talking about neglect because we do not talk about neglect enough. Foster care is only intended for children who have no other family who can help the family out. So if there's no safe caregiver, that's when you enter the foster care system, right? Someone has shown up or there's been months of efforts around families' care of a child. And at some point, someone says, you know what, this child is suffering in their health and safety in your home.

environment. There has been any physical abuse, but everything else is leading to a concern around health and safety in a way that jeopardizes their life. And it is time to take action. Who else can help you? And when the answer is, nobody else can help me. Is there someone else we can take this child to and they can just stay there while you get the help you need? No, there's nobody else available in that family system. That's when you go to court. That's when someone is taking this child into another home. So the threshold is that there's an immediate danger, eminent threat to the child's survival, life, being able to be okay for the next few days. The bar is so high that when I would either meet children in my clinical practice days or when I was more involved on a health

system side and kids would be admitted into the hospital, either way, I was always struck by how long we had waited before we intervened. And each state is different. So I can only speak for Texas and way north Texas. The amount of effort and support and patience and hope that we will spend, it's longer than I would feel comfortable if I was in that position to make that decision. So when we see them clinically, you can see the harm on their physical health, their emotional health, their mental health, their developmental health.

the harms that have already happened from neglect take a while to recover from. Some of that recovery you can see in a few weeks of being in a safe nurturing environment. Some of those recoveries take months. Some of them go up and down and sometimes it takes years. So the neglect that we're talking about for foster care is at a bar that has already created evidence of harm or an eminent threat of harm for a child. And we hate to think of that. The biggest reason I think we don't want to talk about it is because it's almost too painful. I had a legislator once say to me, you know, like the eight-year-old at a park alone at night doesn't belong in foster care. So the whole system is, you know, ridiculous. I'm like, well, that's not who's entering foster

is your child alone in a park area. Yeah. I mean, you know, you're hitting on it exactly from like a rhetorical standpoint, right? I think there's this bogeyman of, you know, of getting your kids taken away that, like, I think it's so effective because every parent feels it. The idea of someone taking your child away is just a very easy, like, nerve to hit for parents. I think a lot about why people believe things that are just so sort of patently false. It's sort of like, why are, and it's not because they're dumb or gullible or, no, not a lack knowledge, right? It's like, they're very smart people, some of whom work in child welfare, who should sort of know the reality is better than they do, but who believe these stories, right?

There's legislators that believe even the most outlandish stories of being sort of falsely accused of child abuse and sort of like, why are journalists doing this? I have many questions as to why people believe these stories. And I think it's not logical. I think it's much more emotional than logical. And I think it does have to do with just really not wanting to picture it. and especially not if that person who's being accused of it seems normal, seems like a person like yourself, seems like somebody that could be your neighbor,

seems like somebody that could be your kid's teacher. It's like I think there's just a very strong aversion to like seeing the world as it is. I mean, do you think people just walking around like just don't quite understand how common abuse is and how bad it is to end up in a child removal. I mean, do you think those are things people just sort of have quite a lot of cognitive dissonance about? I think there's cognitive dissonance because it's not human to picture us hurting our young. Like, that is the opposite of how we're wired and how we're meant to survive as a humanity, right? I also think it's, as we've created these systems to rescue and recover and reunify,

we're so secretive about the process. And part of it is privacy of the families involved. But I think to some degree, that's also when in the absence of information, right, you make it up. You fill in the blanks yourself. If we could have families celebrate their unifications the way we celebrate Adoption Day, it would be amazing. But that's not going to happen. If we could have children grow up and tell stories constantly, just constantly tell stories about

the relief and love they received while they were in foster care and how lucky they are to be back with their families or how lucky they are for their new family who's adopted, welcome them to adoption. It would start to dismantle some of the mystery. I think we have made it easy for people to tell different stories because we are so silent about what's happening. There was was a CDC published survey of high school students. And they surveyed the high school students nationally about how many had experienced one of eight adversities. And the adversities were physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, physical neglect, having a caregiver experienced domestic violence, having a caregiver showing with substance use disorder, incarceration and mental

health disorder of a caregiver. Three out of four high school students had experienced, is at least one of those. But 30% said they had already been physically abused by high school. So by the age of 17, one out of three of these high school students said that they had been physically abused. And 7% had been sexually abused. That's of the general population of high school students. No matter how much work I've done in this space, I was so surprised when I saw that data. It came out, it was a 2023 survey published in 2024, less than 0.02% or something of all kids will enter foster care. So the gap between how many children are experiencing serious trauma in their childhood compared to the teeny tiny population of children to foster care,

we have to ask for ourselves like, what's the difference between the ones who enter foster care and the ones who just grow up in their family and neighborhoods and communities? Until we're willing to look at that and ask those questions, I think there's always this sort of either denial or dismissal of how important foster care is as a core function of a just and humane society. So the kids in foster care tend to have much higher occurrences of chronic medical conditions. You're the kids who've also had heart disease or neurologic conditions or developmental disabilities or trouble with their motor abilities. I mean, there's something else that's made them additionally vulnerable where they couldn't just go ahead and muck through it with their

families and their communities or their relatives. And so it's almost offensive to picture someone dismantling this life-saving, loving system. And it still needs improvement. We still have to keep unrelentingly working on it. But that's what foster care is. If we all accept it, wow, one in three of our high school students have been physically abused, like let's focus on that. not Sally Smith. That was the first part of my conversation with Dr. Anu Partap. Stay tuned for the rest of my conversation tomorrow. Nobody Should Believe Meek is produced and hosted by me, Andrea Dunlop.

Our editor is Greta Stromquist and our senior producer is Mariah Gossett. Administrative support from Nola Karmouche.