Unfortunately, over 30 percent of all children sent back home to their families eventually re-enter foster care because of further abuse or neglect. The children caught in the web of the child welfare system are overwhelmingly poor and without fathers. 9 Most Americans are horrified when confronted with these statistics, but are unaware that they are predictably the direct result of policies that do not hold parents accountable for their behavior. Not surprisingly, the children of those irresponsible parents are the ones who end up in Head Start. The pervading problem is that the child-welfare system is riddled with perverse incentives that undermine personal responsibility and reward destructive behavior.
Social workers understand themselves as providing remedies in the guise of therapeutic treatment.
Parents, according to either theory, are not at fault. Because abuse is not seen as a moral problem, it should be susceptible to professional help. It is therefore not surprising to find reluctance to ever pronounce any given parent irredeemable. Mirroring the science of modern medicine, child-welfare professionals are trained to look at human behavior as a doctor would look at disease. Just as doctors strive to eradicate cancer, child-welfare professionals work to end all strife within the family.