Episode 30:CPS Stories:The Realities of the Child Welfare System

Continuing our conversation with B. Drake, a seasoned professional in the field of child welfare with years of experience. He goes deeper into the stories about kids finding their way through state custody and foster homes. In this segment he discusses the privatization of foster care, which ironically sounds like the privatization of prison...Which then leads us to acknowledge that just like the school to prison pipeline exists, so does the CPS to prison pipeline! We discuss residential treatment facilities who want the kids with the highest needs/level of care because they benefit more from them financially. When those kids start to improve those behaviors and no longer need "high care", they are sometimes removed from those facilities because those facilities can't benefit from them financially. 

We again touch on how kids are placed in foster homes with parents who just view them as a paycheck and isolate them from the rest of the family. We talk about a young man who experienced this isolation after having an extremely rough life of neglect, only to be sexually abused once he entered into the system by the very foster parents that were supposed to care for him. 

We also discuss educational surrogates and their impact on students with IEPs in the school and court system. 

This was definitely a tear-jerker episode that I had to cut short because the truth was a bit too truthful for me. Tune in and let's hear your thoughts!