Catching a Case

Inequality and Fear in New York City's Child Welfare System

By Tina Lee

Rutgers University Press

Influenced by news reports of young children brutalized by their parents, most of us see the role of child services as the prevention of severe physical abuse. But as Tina Lee shows in Catching a Case, most child welfare cases revolve around often ill-founded charges of neglect, and the parents swept into the system are generally struggling but loving, fighting to raise their children in the face of crushing poverty, violent crime, poor housing, lack of childcare, and failing schools.

Lee explored the child welfare system in New York City, observing family courts, interviewing parents and following them through the system, asking caseworkers for descriptions of their work and their decision-making processes, and discussing cases with attorneys on all sides. What she discovered about the system is troubling. Lee reveals that, in the face of draconian budget cuts and a political climate that blames the poor for their own poverty, child welfare practices have become punitive, focused on removing children from their families and on parental compliance with rules. Rather than provide needed help for families, case workers often hold parents to standards almost impossible for working-class and poor parents to meet. For instance, parents can be accused of neglect for providing inadequate childcare or housing even when they cannot afford anything better. In many cases, child welfare exacerbates family problems and sometimes drives parents further into poverty while the family court system does little to protect their rights.

Catching a Case is a much-needed wake-up call to improve the child welfare system, and to offer more comprehensive social services that will allow all children to thrive.

Lee's important contribution reveals embedded racism and classism within the child welfare system.' Aimee Cox, Fordham University

[Catching a Case] provides the reader with tangible information regarding the current urgency to provide comprehensive policies that serve the needs of mothers and children. Additionally, this work serves as a road map to begin to imagine simple ways to create meaningful change. InterActions

For anyone interested in child welfare and/or the foster care system … Highly recommended. Choice

Catching a Case is impressive in its breadth and analytical reach and will be useful for teaching in a number of different areas, including courses on youth and society, critical race theory, gender studies, poverty and inequality, the anthropology of bureaucracy, institutional and organizational ethnography, social service systems, American culture, and applied or public anthropology. North American Dialogue

Lee’s work is written in an accessible style, and presents a view of a complex system that is accessible for the non-expert. As such, her book will be of interest to undergraduate and graduate students interested in the anthropology of politics, law, and bureaucracy, as well as social workers, legal actors, and policy makers interested in a critique of the contemporary child welfare system. PoLAR

TINA LEE is an associate professor of anthropology and the director of the Applied Social Science Program at the University of Wisconsin–Stout.

Acknowledgments

1 Introduction

2 A History of Child Welfare in New York City

3 The Life of a Child Welfare Case

4 Fear and a System in Crisis

5 Policing versus Helping in Child Welfare

6 Defining Neglect and Risk Assessment in Practice

7 Power in Child Welfare: Compliance and Rights

8 Re-creating Stratified Reproduction and System Change

Notes

References