As a foster-only parent in Massachusetts, I think I have much more interaction with DCF than most parents, albeit from a rather different angle.
In general, the parents’ concern here seems overblown to me — my perception is that DCF case workers will pretty much always start by talking to parents about their concerns if at all possible, and that they’re wildly unlikely to take any punitive action if a conversation about DCF’s expectations is enough to correct (from their perspective) the family’s behavior. If nothing else, the institutional incentives are structured this way; taking on another long-term case even just for monitoring purposes will add more work, case workers already have full loads (or more) as it is, and DCF’s funding (thus staffing) generally doesn’t scale per case.
What I’m seeing is that DCF doesn’t remove children from their homes lightly; if anything, they tend to wait a little too long in order to collect clearer evidence that removal is necessary. They also just don’t really have enough good places to put kids for it to make sense for them to remove kids whose parents are willing and able to cooperate with DCF guidance. Note that removal is not a purely administrative procedure: DCF generally needs to get a court order authorizing a removal before acting, and while they can act immediately in emergency situations, that will get reviewed by a court within days and is subject to a higher legal standard (so from what I see, case workers are hesitant to go that route if they see any other option). Case workers really do not want to risk getting their judgment overruled in court.
Which brings me to:
Having no guidelines is probably better than having very limiting ones, so maybe I should be thankful that MA DCF doesn’t give any?
Yeah. I can see how sensible guidelines would be useful and reassuring, but I think we’re better off without the formal guidelines that would actually be created if such guidelines were established. I think there would be both political pressure toward more conservative guidelines (when people think about the appropriateness of minimum age standards, I think most people are primed to assess what is reasonable for most kids rather than what is reasonable for the most mature cohort thereof, and political discourse generally isn’t nuanced enough nowadays to draw such distinctions very well) and institutional pressure in the same direction (case workers don’t want anything that will make their jobs harder, and they totally will end up arguing with parents and their public defenders about whether guidance for more mature kids is applicable in their case when they have less mature kids), so I’m really not surprised to see that the states that do give guidance were heavily slanted in that direction.
As a foster-only parent in Massachusetts, I think I have much more interaction with DCF than most parents, albeit from a rather different angle.
In general, the parents’ concern here seems overblown to me — my perception is that DCF case workers will pretty much always start by talking to parents about their concerns if at all possible, and that they’re wildly unlikely to take any punitive action if a conversation about DCF’s expectations is enough to correct (from their perspective) the family’s behavior. If nothing else, the institutional incentives are structured this way; taking on another long-term case even just for monitoring purposes will add more work, case workers already have full loads (or more) as it is, and DCF’s funding (thus staffing) generally doesn’t scale per case.
What I’m seeing is that DCF doesn’t remove children from their homes lightly; if anything, they tend to wait a little too long in order to collect clearer evidence that removal is necessary. They also just don’t really have enough good places to put kids for it to make sense for them to remove kids whose parents are willing and able to cooperate with DCF guidance. Note that removal is not a purely administrative procedure: DCF generally needs to get a court order authorizing a removal before acting, and while they can act immediately in emergency situations, that will get reviewed by a court within days and is subject to a higher legal standard (so from what I see, case workers are hesitant to go that route if they see any other option). Case workers really do not want to risk getting their judgment overruled in court.
Which brings me to:
Yeah. I can see how sensible guidelines would be useful and reassuring, but I think we’re better off without the formal guidelines that would actually be created if such guidelines were established. I think there would be both political pressure toward more conservative guidelines (when people think about the appropriateness of minimum age standards, I think most people are primed to assess what is reasonable for most kids rather than what is reasonable for the most mature cohort thereof, and political discourse generally isn’t nuanced enough nowadays to draw such distinctions very well) and institutional pressure in the same direction (case workers don’t want anything that will make their jobs harder, and they totally will end up arguing with parents and their public defenders about whether guidance for more mature kids is applicable in their case when they have less mature kids), so I’m really not surprised to see that the states that do give guidance were heavily slanted in that direction.