A new article out in Truth-Out quotes Executive Director Charity Tolliver about the realities of mandated reporting. Some key quotes:
- “These expansions of mandated reporting are often seen by the public as unquestionably beneficial, but they are rife with consequences.”
- “Expanding mandated reporting is like stop-and-frisk,” Dorothy Roberts, author of Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare and a law professor at University of Pennsylvania, told Truthout. “Because of individual and institutionalized racial bias in child maltreatment reporting, like the bias in police surveillance, these seemingly neutral practices that are supposed to increase safety end up unjustly punishing people of color.”
- “Tolliver does the math. “In Illinois, it costs $40,000 – $42,000 a year to keep a child in foster care, yet most families where that child lives are living below the poverty line.” She says it would make an “extraordinary difference” for that family to have access to even a portion of these resources. “
- “‘We aren’t solving anything by removing kids,” Tolliver said. “Most will not go back to homes that are healthier or stronger. Rather, the state has done damage, pulling parents from their jobs, placing them in a panic mode and under surveillance, and not investing in families.'”
Black on Both Sides 