Comment by spwa4

Par for the course for child agencies. Look up what Scotland is doing [a]. The old problem that all child agencies have: EVERY time it gets studied academically it turns out they do more damage than they ever help. This [1] is the biggest study ever on the subject.

Not only does the study prove that child well-being would improve (a LOT btw) if we just DOGE-style cancelled all child welfare interventions and ended the agencies entirely. It also proves how interventions should work: the more child protection agencies do, the worse the effect on the child. Every intervention is negative, but especially switching from voluntary care to involuntary destroys children's lives. But, of course, these agencies never do that. Anyone who knows the basics understands: social workers, when asked to leave, should leave and stay gone until asked to come back. This applies EVEN to children who are abused at home. Well, it applies if you want to help.

There's other studies. One particularly bad one shows that children who leave child services by committing a crime (because child services gets to choose ... and refuse any particular child. That means, effectively that if a child commits a violent crime, even if the kid is 10 years old, they get sent home). Those children who attacked their caregivers in child services with violence, had better outcomes than children who left foster/institutional care "normally". Better/more studies. Less crimes (yes, really), ...

Studies also prove that there are positives to be had in child agencies. But exactly in the way these agencies and the justice department hate. The people on the ground in those agencies are bad, as in having people "help" children, trainings, psychology, "support", ... has strong reinforcing negative effects. The more of those given, the stronger the negative effect on children. Even the highest level of support ever given (which is 4 hours weekly with a trained medical professional psychiatrist) had essentially no effect. Although at least trained doctor-psychologists can say that they did no damage. Social workers ... anything they do damages kids.

By contrast, concrete support WITHOUT forcing people onto kids works. Give a roof to parents who become homeless. Give children actual money for doing sports, for healthy food, medical help (even yes, the famous access to medical help without involving parents) ... without doing so much as checking what the money is used for (there is also a study that pointed out that even if they bought a PS1 with it that really helped). There is even a study of giving primary school children a single folder that explains (in over 40 pages) how and why to get to university. That had a big positive effect. A lot of things have positive effects. But "interventions", treatment by social workers or in general has strong, reinforcing, negative effects.

What you see time and again in studies is that people do not help. Psychologists (the non-medical-doctor kind), "nurses" (again the non-medical kind), school advisors, and social workers of every kind have almost universally negative effects on children, that worsen over time instead of improving things.

And it's not even close. VERY bad parents (even seriously abusive parents: e.g. single mom drug addict) are a lot better than the best places in child agencies.

The history of these studies go back far, and it has never really been different. And to that I'll add: treatment of children has improved a lot since WW2 (and the studies before WW2, let's just point out where certain things started [2] [3]). I have not found a single case since 1980 where a parent shot a child on purpose, worldwide, whereas in the 10 years after WW2 ... But you see this improvement across the board. Even extremely bad parents have improved a lot.

Oh and before you ask "what if parents abandon a child?". Well let me inform you: youth services DOES NOT take care of abandoned children. There's a medical service that does that, and until the child agency chooses to take in the child, they are taken care of in hospitals (since hospitals have to deal with long-term-ill children, most if not all countries have facilities to have children have extended stays in hospitals. Schools. Food. Sport activities ...). Of course, in every country I know of, child services agencies have decided that hospitals do not get any kind of compensation from the budget of child services for that. Hence I feel very comfortable saying that child welfare agencies do not, ever, take care of abandoned children.

[a] https://www.gov.scot/policies/girfec/named-person/

[1] https://mitsloan.mit.edu/shared/ods/documents?PublicationDoc...

[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05112-1 (note the URL)

[3] https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/euthanasia... ("the buses", these were child welfare agencies) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Am_Spiegelgrund

Let's just say it like it is: in WW2, (Austrian) state child welfare agencies started the holocaust and enthousiastically participated in it (child welfare agencies in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Italy, ... all enthousiastically participated. So frankly, even in WW2, a parent who shot their own children was still giving better care than the state)