Werme Tricks - Pick On The Poor
September 8, 2005
Attorney Werme’s second claim on her Tricks of the Trade page is that DCYF “preys” on families with young children who are “struggling to keep up with the costs of raising a family on a small income”. Attorney Werme is half correct. DCYF does receive quite a few referrals to meet lower income families. There could be dozens reasons for this. I suspect that one of the biggest reasons DCYF receives more referrals for lower income families is because lower income families tend to receive assistance from more community resources. For example, an 18 year old mother of three, who is currently living with the youngest child’s father, could be receiving housing assistance, that might include a weekly home inspection, day care assistance, that might include a weekly home visit with the children, health care assistance, that might include a weekly visit from the Visiting Nurses Association, and maybe this young mother accepts assistance from a food pantry or church, and perhaps attends a play group put on by the local community once a week. This mother could have six or eight different professionals in and out of her home every week. This means that there are six to eight more professionals who are mandated by law, and by their jobs to report any of their concerns. Further, all of these professionals work closely with DCYF when they have families in common. They know that a large part of DCYF’s job is to refer families to resources, and sometimes ask the local County to assist a family in paying for a service. This is a sometimes unfortunate by-product of the system that we have created - families who need assistance recieve it, but in doing so, they open their lives to professionals who might have concerns about their children’s safety.
The other unfortunate part of the system is that lower income families tend to cycle. I mean that a mother who gets pregnant at 15, then again at 17, then again at 18, and maybe again at 19 tends to be more likely to produce children who will get pregnant at younger ages. This is a societal problem, nothing that DCYF has created, but something that DCYF does have to deal with on a regular basis. Upper income families tend to have fewer children in this predicament. I am not a sociologist, and I am not going to attempt to explain the reasoning behind this - I am simply speaking to my own professional observations. Younger families do sometimes have more challenges, learing how to grow up themselves while raising children - it doesn’t always work well.
While Attorney Werme would like you to believe that we “prey” on young, lower income families, she is incorrect. First of all, DCYF has no control over who might call in a concern. Second of all, Attorney Werme does not work for DCYF, and cannot know all of the families that we have contact with. In my time with DCYF, I have met families from every income bracket. I have spent time in apartments that are partially paid for with assistance from the State, and I have spent time in multi-million dollar homes. I have interviewed children in public schools, and in private schools. I have talked to kids who cry because they believe that their mommy doesn’t love them, and to kids who cry because their daddy made them clean their room for the week that the maid had off. Just because we see lower income families does not mean that we ignore upper income families. We may have fewer opportunities to really know what goes on in their homes sometimes, but it does not mean that we do not strive to make sure children are safe, whatever their income bracket.
I work for The Division for Children, Youth & Families for the State of New Hampshire (generally known as DCYF). I’m not saying that DCYF is a perfectly run agency, or that every decision made within the agency is absolutely correct. I think that every organization has faults, and room to grow. What really irritates me are people like 