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24 Chapter Two The Swinging Pendulum: Child Welfare Policy at the National Level Discussions of child welfare policy often invoke the metaphor of a pendulum, arguing that child welfare policy swings back and forth from an emphasis on family preservation and reunification to an emphasis on child removal and termination of parental rights. According to this view, the scandal-driven nature of child welfare policy means that when a scandal in which children are harmed by their parents captures headlines, policymakers push for legislation that promotes faster removal of children. Alternatively, when headlines focus on children who are languishing in foster care or children who have been harmed by a foster parent, policymakers push for greater efforts to keep families together. Subsequent chapters will focus on the link between scandal and child welfare policy at the state level, but this chapter focuses on national policy. Analysis of the national politics around child welfare provides additional insight into the connections between scandal and policymaking. In addition child welfare policy at the state level is powerfully shaped by federal rules attached to receipt of child welfare funds. For these reasons understanding state child welfare policy requires also understanding federal child welfare policy. Over time the role of the federal government has expanded in the area of child welfare. Consequently, policy debates at the national level have reflected not only debates about the importance of family preservation versus child removal but also debates about the appropriate role of the federal government in shaping state policy choices. In addition policy debates at the national level reflect changing views about families and about the appropriate extent of government intervention in family life. To illustrate these shifts over time this chapter traces the history of national child welfare policymaking, focusing in particular on two key pieces of federal legislation: the 1980 Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act (AACWA) and the 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA).1 AACWA focused on encouraging states to move children more quickly out of foster care, with an emphasis on family reunification as the preferred alternative (Wilkinson-Hagen 2004, 143). The policy The Swinging Pendulum: Child Welfare Policy at the National Level 25 pendulum then swung in the other direction with the passage of ASFA, which amended the AACWA. Although the stated purpose of ASFA was similar to that of AACWA in terms of emphasizing the importance of ending “foster care drift,” ASFA focused on finding permanent adoptive homes for foster children rather than reunifying families. This chapter explores the way in which highprofile child welfare scandals and changing views about government’s obligation to assist troubled families have shaped these policy shifts over time. Child Welfare as National Policy Before the federal government’s enactment of AACWA in 1980, child abuse itself had to first be recognized as a public problem appropriately addressed by government. Then, once child abuse was established as an issue on the public agenda, the federal government turned its attention to what happens to abused children once they enter state child welfare systems. Child Abuse as a Policy Issue The initial recognition of child abuse as a public problem is usually traced to the 1874 New York case of Mary Ellen Wilson. Mary Ellen lived with her stepmother, who was ultimately imprisoned for mistreating her through both neglect (“ill-clothed in bad weather”) and abuse (“chained to her bed and whipped daily with a rawhide cord”) (Nelson 1984, 7–8, 54). The Mary Ellen case received extensive media coverage and resulted in the formation of the first Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, modeled after the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Nelson 1984). However, after the 1870s the issue of child abuse largely fell from public view. In the modern era child abuse only reemerged to be seen as a problem requiring a governmental response in the 1960s after publication of an influential article in the American Medical Association Journal that described “Battered-Child Syndrome” (Kempe et al. 1962).2 In a five-year period after publication of the article (from 1963 to 1967) every state passed a child abuse reporting law (Nelson 1984). Nelson (1984) explains the rapid diffusion of these laws as resulting from “the symbolic and valence qualities of the issue, and the absence of monetary or political costs” (80). Requiring certain individuals to report suspected child abuse received widespread acceptance in state governments in part because of the universal condemnation of child abuse and in...

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