Child Poverty Policies Do Not Work By the Numbers

According to the federal report for 2013 fiscal year, there is an increase in the number of children who have entered foster care.

According to the federal report for 2013 fiscal year, there is a decrease in the number of children who live in poverty.

These data lag by 2 years and have lots of missing data; whereby, the statistics are skewed.

The numbers are significantly higher nationally, by geographic regions and by certain populations.

Note: Hispanic includes children of all races. White, Not Hispanic does not include any Hispanic children and starting in 2002 excludes White, Not Hispanic children reporting multiple race categories. Black or African-American includes Hispanic children and starting in 2002 includes Black or African-American children reporting multiple race categories.

CHILD POVERTY

Children in African-American, Hispanic, and Non-Hispanic White Families

• For African-American children, the poverty rate in 2013 was 36.9 percent. The poverty rate for African-American children in 2013 was 5.4 percentage points higher than a decade earlier in 2002.
• For Hispanic children, the poverty rate in 2013 was 30.4 percent, a decrease from 33.8 percent in 2012. The poverty rate for Hispanic children in 2013 was 3.5 percentage points higher than the recent low in 2006.
• For non-Hispanic White children, the poverty rate was 10.7 percent in 2013. The poverty rate for non-Hispanic White children in 2013 was 1.6 percentage points higher than the recent low in 2000.

If you lump the"children of color", the disparities become an even more apparent reflection of current economic and social policy failures.

Children of color are labeled as "Targeted Populations", a codification of racial profiling.

Number of US children in foster care up sharply

New federal figures show that for the first time in a decade, there was a notable increase last year in the number of U.S. children in foster care.

The annual report from the Department of Health and Human Services, released Wednesday, tallied 415,129 children in the foster care system as of September 30, 2014, up from about 401,000 a year earlier. The peak was 524,000 children in foster care in 2002, and the number had dropped steadily since 2005 before rising slightly in 2013.

The long-term drop resulted primarily from shifts in the policies and practices of state and county child welfare agencies. Many shortened stays in foster care, expedited adoptions and expanded preventive support for troubled families so more children avoided being removed from home in the first place.

DHHS AFCARS Report FY 2013

It is time to include child welfare in justice reform discussions.

Voting is beautiful, be beautiful ~ vote.©

SAMHSA Liability Disclaimer Explains Child Welfare Fraud

I have a problem with this report.

Here is a basic list of why:

1. Weaknesses:  Whenever you list what the "Strengths" are, you always list the "weaknesses.  The purpose of this is to proceed to improve.  Guess they do not believe there is room for any.  They do include "Challenges", but challenges are obstacles or barriers, not weaknesses;
2. Missing Data: There is no mention of missing data.  Many states do not report properly regarding their child welfare systems.  In far too great of occurrences, there are problems with late reporting, false reporting, duplicate reporting, incomplete reporting, fraudulent reporting, much is just not reported.  The technical term for this coding is "99".  Guess there are no errors over here.  Even though it has been identified that, in most of the listed systems, not all states report, missing data still deals with the data that are submitted, or rather omitted because it is voluntary;
3. Biases: Certainly, if these child welfare systems maintained and imputed reported data which are reflective of the levels of abuse, neglect, torture and deaths within the child welfare system, then, and only then would these systems become credible.  Let us not be remiss in observing that these systems do not make any mention of litigation (i.e. civil and criminal) and the federal reported findings of severe failures of the federal and state grant management systems which have found multiple instances of fraud, waste and abuse.  As poverty is codified as abuse and neglect, it is non-existent in these data systems to report the lack of medical insurance, quality and affordable housing and poor community infrastructure as an identifiable category worth documenting and reporting.

This is nothing more than a public introduction to child welfare propaganda.  I want to see data maintained on:

Children who have been abused and neglected in foster care;

Children who have died in foster care;

Children who have been sexually abused in foster care;

Children who have been improperly placed in foster care.


The most entertaining part of this report was the disclaimer:

The views, opinions, and content of this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or policies of SAMHSA or HHS.  Resources listed in this document are not all-inclusive and inclusion in the list does not constitute an endorsement by SAMHSA or HHS.

If this is the case, then why did it put its name on the publication and pay for it?????  These are just some of the many questions I get a kick out of posing and watching the blood drain from the faces of administrators.  Duh.

Introduction to Cross-System Data Sources in Child Welfare, Alcohol and Other Drug Services, and Courts by Beverly Tran on Scribd

GAO Most States Are Developing Statewide Information Systems, but the Reliability of Child Welfare Data Cou...