Question No. 9
Public assistance is controversial in American society because of the belief that has taken root that poverty is basically the fault of the poor. This goes, in part, back to the idea of the Puritan work ethic and the concept of the American Dream, which teaches that anyone who is willing to work hard can succeed at whatever he wants to accomplish. While this is a positive statement, the inverse means that there is an assumption that people who have not succeeded somehow are intrinsically lazy or simply do not want to get ahead. This attitude is corrosive because it basically ensures that a large segment of American society has no interest in helping others break cycles of poverty that may go back many generations.
Generational poverty has proven to be difficult for many families to escape. Children grow up in homes where there is a lot of anxiety on a daily basis because of the fact that families simply are not having an easy time making ends meet and frequently worry where the money for rent, food and clothing will come from. As a result, children grow up thinking that this sort of crisis mentality is normal – and without exposure to any other way to live, they view college as a dream that they can never accomplish for themselves and believe that they will live in that same cycle that trapped their grandparents and parents.
Many public assistance programs are designed to help families break this cycle by including job training programs and educational opportunities that will give younger people more options. However, these are still fairly new, and given the recent budget cuts in welfare programs across the nation, they are not likely to expand.
Question No. 10
When it comes to the child welfare system in the United States, there are a number of issues that have long served as the sources of tension that policy makers must tread carefully. Some of these include: parents’ rights or children’s needs; rescuing children or bolstering families; protective or developmental parenting services; in-home support, foster care or institutional care; professional services or organic, informal support networks; social costs or benefits for care (McGowan, n.d.). One of the most notorious cases of a child welfare system facing a dilemma took place in 2008, when the Texas Department of Child Protective Services had caseworkers enter the Yearning For Zion Ranch, near the tiny town of Eldorado, on the suspicion of adult men being married to teen girls. The call that initiated the investigation led CPS to remove 439 children from that ranch (Langford, 2014). The case went into a lengthy litigation process, but eventually ten of the eleven men charged with child sexual assault were convicted, and the state ended up seizing the ranch because it was the site of criminal activity. All in all, state taxpayers paid over $12 million for the investigation of this case (Langford, 2014). During the case, judges ordered the children in and out of CPS custody, making for a legal mess. In a more recent situation, the CPS office in Dallas, Texas, has kids sleeping there because they have been removed from homes, but CPS in Dallas County does not have enough foster homes available to take the children in (Ragland 2016). Given the current budget-slashing mood of many city and state governments, this situation is not likely to change for the better any time soon.
References
Langford, T. (2014). Texas seizes polygamist group’s ranch in West Texas. The
Texas Tribune 17 April 2014. https://www.texastribune.org/2014/04/17/texas-seizes-polygamist-groups-ranch-west-texas/
McGowan, B. (n.d.) Historical evolution of child welfare services.
http://www.nrcpfc.org/ifcpc/module_1/pre%20training%20reading.pdf
Ragland, J. (2016). Texas’ broken foster care system is on display in
shorthanded Dallas office. Dallas Morning News 21 March 2016. http://thescoopblog.dallasnews.com/2016/03/texas-broken-foster-care-system-on-display-in-dallas.html/
