Reconstructing "Community": A vital political innovation

9 thoughts on “Reconstructing “Community”: A vital political innovation”

1. I knew you couldn’t quit us 🙂

   As to community, one of the strongest remaining is the network via where your kids go to school. Between classes, sports teams, etc you end up with a pretty wide network of fellow parents.

   Log in to Reply

   1. The analogy to public education isn’t just an analogy: This new legal entity, “Community,” is in many ways an extension of the public education model. One of the great weaknesses of our public education system just in terms of providing education is that it misconceives education as something that occurs within a precise location during precise hours. In reality, our schools cannot be as successful as we would like them to be until they recognize that their mission extends to working with parents and the community to facilitate the success of their mission.

      The “Community” in this statute takes that notion, and extends its responsibilities to the full range of those that communities have always served, aided by and in partnership with both the state and individual families.

      Log in to Reply

2. Neither the Indian Child Welfare Act, nor the practice in some South Asian countries of applying different bodies of family law to different religious/cultural communities (e.g. Sunni Muslims, Shiites, Hindus and Christians) which are based upon using non-geographic communities to deal with child welfare, are known as great successes.

   The practice of race conscious adoption also has a very mixed record.

   Extended family oriented approaches seem to have a better track record (either through the guardianship process in probate courts or the family council approach of the French).  And, anecdotally, so have geographical or ad hoc approaches in oppressively monocultural places (e.g. the Front Range in Kent Haruf’s “Plain Song” and informal adoptions in Japanese communities).

   Put generally, it matters more that guardians of children have a clear and proven personal ideology of child rearing than it is that the agenda be similar to that of the parents’ cultural community.

   Log in to Reply

   1. prohibits race conscious adoption. The legitimate concern of creating continuity of the familiar for children who have already undergone some socialization prior to being launched into the foster care system is accomplished by other means, explicitly race neutral, but favoring the familiar community.

      One coherent body of family law is applied to all, with deference to variation that is or would be prohibited only due to ethnocentric presumptions, and not due to actual harm to the child (example: a loving Afghani refugee was charged with child abuse for kissing his infant son’s penis, a photo of which was in the family album and seen by an American neighbor, who reported it. That gesture is a non-sexual gesture of affection common in Afghani culture).

      The statute creates a state-community partnership, not an unbalanced deference to insular communities. It provides opportunities both for community individuality and definition, and for state vigilance, both of which are its purpose. Striking such a balance is precisely the challenge we face, and have not adequately addressed, both in general, and most particularly in regard to child welfare policies.

      A child placed in the system by this statute is placed in the system 1) only after utilizing the community to try to remedy the problems in the home to avoid the usually disastrous disruption to the child’s life that foster care involves, and 2) not to achieve any abstract continuity  of ideology, but rather to achieve a very real need for actual continuity and permanence in the child’s environment (once the child has acquired consciousness of his or her surroundings; for newborns, this is not particularly important).

      Finally, 1) your observation that what really matters is that foster or adoptive parents are good parents is (meaning no offense) like saying what really matters to achieve a good child welfare system is that it is a good child welfare system. The challenge isn’t in stating the obvious, but rather in achieving the difficult.

      2) Read differently, your final statement suggests that someone has the authority to declare what is “a proven personal ideology of child rearing,” a matter on which there is enormous both professional and lay disagreement. Must it be a Christian family? (Fundamentalist Christians say “yes”). Should it spare the rod and spoil the child, or use severe discipline (one fundamentalist sect recommends paddling children for up to two hours without relenting)? Striking the balance between permitting familial autonomy up to a point, but also imposing societal norms when that point is reached, is one of the non-trivial challenges we face, and which this statute addresses.

      Log in to Reply

      1. In non-pathological cases continuity is usually good for children.

         There is room for supporting families, although the main problem is more often lack of funds, than lack of community support — it is easier to be good parents if the parents don’t have to work four jobs, turn tricks, or deal drugs to get by.

         There is also an argument for cultural sensitivity in making a determination about whether neglect or abuse requiring removal from a household is appropriate.  Some allegedly abusive acts have different meanings and cultural checks on them, and some apparently neglect can be solved with simple education — then again many culturally accepted acts viewed as abusive or neglectful here, e.g. selling girls to settle debts or leaving young children unsupervised for long periods of time, don’t deserve a free pass.

         But, once the kids have been removed, cultural continuity has little to recommend it.  Indeed, I would argue, it really doesn’t matter what culture, ideology, or parenting style the children are thrown into, so long as the parents have proven successful in their own communities and have clear bearings on how to raise children.  Placement by dartboard would probably be more successful than an arduous effort to maintain cultural continuity, even for kids who have socialized a great deal.

         Log in to Reply

         1. “The Lost Children of Wilder” by Nina Bernstein, which chronicles the landmark New York court case (which was in the courts for decades) regarding their child welfare system, and the role of severing affective ties in order to improve the child’s welfare. It is a failed policy. There is also a great deal of academic literature involving historical and contemporary analyses, rather than just the poignant anecdotal story told in “Wilder.”

            As for which culturally-specific practices deserve and don’t deserve deference, please look again at my posts, where I have already stated what you are stating as if in contradiction to my position.

            The continuity I am trying to preserve isn’t just, or even primarily, cultural. It is human, affective, and familiar. There is a tremendous amount of research into the effects of interrupting affective bonds in young children, even when the relationships are dysfuntional or abusive: The children experience a lifetime of anxiety and fear in anticipation of forming any bonds with anyone. That infermity is not of marginal importance: It undermines those individuals’ ability to function, and to be law abiding and productive citizens, in the most fundamental way.

            Furthermore, finding good homes for children, even absent these considerations, is very difficult. Children placed in the foster care system tend to experience a lifetime of instability, impermanence, and often psychological and social problems resulting from it. Trying to increase continuity and permanence for children is absolutely of crucial importance.

            Log in to Reply

         2. I appreciate your participating in a discussion of the issue, and think that there is certainly a genuine issue that you are striking upon: What is the correct balance, or trade-off, between trying to find a better home for a child, and trying to maintain permanence of continuity for the child? When framed that way, the response “permanence be damned!” appears reasonable. But the framing is misleading.

            The two values identified are not mutually exclusive, and are both valuable considerations. In fact, to some extent, they depend on one another.

            First, about permanence as a value to be pursued in child welfare policy: After just having spent hundreds of hours over the past four months in focused research on the topic of child welfare policy, that permanence is an important value to be pursued seems to be universally accepted among child welfare workers, and all lawyers and scholars involved in addressing the issue. And, after that concentrated exposure to the empirical evidence, I agree with that consensus.

            There is not a consensus about, nor really much attention to, the notion that one good way to accomplish that is to do less severing, and rather to do more preserving of whatever aspects of whatever relationships a child is in that are healthy for that child. That is what I have tried to introduce.

            Clearly, the simple solution of just putting kids into good homes isn’t a solution at all, because that is what child welfare policy has purported, and failed, to do for the entirety of its existence. The reasons for that failure are identifiable and reparable.

            In fact, the notion you introduce of seeking parents that have proven successful in their own communities is one that is actually served by the statute I have suggested for discussion. The problem is that in our current social institutional framework, we have very poor mechanisms of assessing the abilities of foster and prospective adoptive parents, and a very poor track record of placing kids in good, stable, healthy new homes. The challenge, again, is not in saying that it would be good to do, but in actually figuring out how to do it.

            Log in to Reply

   2. is written into the statute. I think, understandably, you misunderstood from my description the purpose and substance of both the statute and the legal construct “Commnity.” It’s purpose is, first and foremost, to help families succeed. Second, when problems arise, it serves to intervene early and in a supportive way. Third, when all else fails, it seeks to maintain as much continuity for the child, and to preserve as much of and as many of the affective bonds the child has formed (for instance, not severing old relationships when a placed in a new home, and not ending relationships entirely when primary responsibility must be terminated due to parental inability to care for a child).

      While I respect cultural diversity, I do not advocate artificial means of preserving it. Culture is organic. Our laws should respect, accommodate, and facilitate diversity up to the point that reasonable but tolerant people would say, “that is objectively harmful, and must be prohibited.” Obviously, this is an imperfect standard: Human prejudices and presumptions can’t be wished away. All we can do is design our laws to help strike the best balance we are capable of striking.

      More basically, we need to get past the superficial, conventional ways of conceiving of and implementing social policy. What we don’t need is more of the same, selecting from among the conventional menu of options, while retaining a fundamentally flawed underlying institutional structure.

      As I’ve often said here and elsewhere, the real challenge is a nuts-and-bolts question of how best to structure our lives, using all social institutional materials available, imposing no a priori assumptions or preferences, and engaging in the combination of analysis, experimentation, and implementation that will help us refine our social institutional landscape in generally beneficial and sustainable ways.

      As always, I’m trying to move the discussion in that direction: More detail-oriented, more theoretically and analytically informed, and more freed from prevailing assumptions and conceptual orientations.

      This statute has little or nothing in common with the policies you have associated with (my fault in how I introduced it, not yours in how you interpreted it). In fact, I strongly oppose the policies with which you associated it. The option of choosing a cultural Community instead of a geographical one (the latter being what I would prefer to be the universal norm) was to work at striking the right balance between individual liberty and state imposition.

      Log in to Reply

3. The Child Welfare through Family and Community Facilitation Act (the Act):
   
   (1): The Family and Community Facilitation and Child Welfare Administration (the Administration) shall be established to execute this Act and all of its provisions.
   
   (a): The Administration shall be staffed by Community Facilitators (CFs) and Family Support Case Workers (FSCWs), trained and licensed in the skills necessary to implement the provisions of this Act.
   
   (2): Current Parents, Expectant Parents, Foster Parents, Prospective Adoptive Parents, Legal Guardians, or primary care-givers (collectively, “parent,” whether referring to one parent acting alone or more than one parent making decisions together), along with their children, shall either formally belong to a Community, as defined in subsection (a), and participate in Community Parenting Support Meetings (CPSMs), or shall attend a Parental State-Disengagement Determination (PSDD) conducted by an agent of the Administration according to section 2(c) below. (Non-parents are encouraged, but not required, except as specified below, to belong to a Community and attend CPSMs). If a parent declines to attend either CPSMs or a PSDD, then an FSCW will automatically be assigned to that parent.
   
   (a): The Administration shall create regulations to ensure that parents, both expectant and actual, follow procedures incumbent on parents in accord with this Act as soon after being informed of impending or actual parenthood, or beginning adoption proceedings, as is reasonably practicable.
   
   (b): A Community, for the purposes of this statute, is either geographically or culturally defined.
   
   (i): A parent shall by default belong to his/her geographical community, unless that parent selects a cultural community to belong to.
   
   (ii): The upper and lower numerical limits of such Communities, the boundaries of Geographical Communities, the degree of geographic dispersion permissible for Cultural Communities, and the criteria of what constitutes a Cultural Community, shall be determined by the Administration according to guidelines designed to insure that each Community is so constituted as to be capable of satisfying the functions described in the provisions of this Act, and of advancing the goals defined as the purpose of this Act (following the provisions described in subsection (iii) to protect parents utilizing culturally variant practices from ethnocentric presumptions of abuse or neglect).
   
   (iii): Culturally variant practices that might be technical violations of the law, or presumptively harmful from a prevalent American cultural perspective, shall constitute grounds neither for refusing definition to a Cultural Community, nor for invoking the provisions in sections 4 and 5 of this statute, if they do not unambiguously create objective harm or deprivation to the child, if all or nearly all members of the Cultural Community would find the practice harmless and inoffensive, and if the Cultural Community has an independent existence and is not an artifact of convenience designed primarily to insulate its members from legal constraints to which they would otherwise be subject.
   
   (iv): Communities shall be assigned the task of ensuring, with the organizational resources allocated and with the oversight of the CF, that the basic needs of parents and children in the Community are attended to by
   
   (I): assisting parents in accessing the relevant family support programs established by complementary legislation, which provide children and families with adequate material support and vital services,
   
   (II): facilitating mutual cooperation among Community members to provide one another with the moral, emotional, and informational support conducive to the long-term welfare of all of the children and parents in the Community, and
   
   (III); providing children with age-appropriate means for expressing their views and preferences regarding their own upbringing and disposition, and having those views and preferences known and taken into consideration in any proceedings that involve them.
   
   (c): CPSMs shall be held at a frequency to be determined by the Administration for each Community in consultation with the members of that Community, not to exceed one time per week nor be less than one time per month. By similar means, the Administration shall establish a mandatory attendance rate for parents in each Community, not to be less than 30% nor exceed 70% of all meetings, applicable to each parent individually, except in particular cases in accordance with subsection (ii) below.
   
   (i): Each Community shall arrange on-premises child-care during the meetings by having three or more parents, on a rotating basis, undertake child care responsibilities during each meeting.
   
   (ii): The Administration shall assist individual parents and Communities to make special arrangements in cases of particular scheduling problems, exercising a substantial commitment to accommodating parents with such verified scheduling problems, so long as the conflict involves an obligation that substantially contributes to the family’s material welfare.
   
   (d): The Administration shall conduct PSDDs at the time and location most convenient for the parent whenever possible, and with substantial deference to the parent’s presumed right to direct the upbringing of the parent’s child(ren) as the parent sees fit. The Administration shall determine at the PSDD whether there is any compelling reason not to permit the parent to voluntarily disengage from the Family and Community Support apparatus established by this Act.
   
   (i): The Administration shall establish a fully delineated set of criteria by which to make such determinations, and will do so under guidelines designed to prevent the influence of prejudices on the part of its agents, such as those regarding race, ethnicity, culture, class, gender, or sexual orientation.
   
   (ii): If such a compelling reason is not found to exist, the parent will be allowed to disengage from the state involvement delineated in this Act, except for the provisions of sections 2(d), 3(a)(5), 5, and 6.
   
   (iii): If such a compelling reason is found to exist, the parent will be assigned an FSCW.
   
   (3): Family Support Case Workers (FSCWs) are entrusted with the responsibilities of monitoring families for evidence of Child Abuse or Neglect (as defined in 20-8-140 of the SHF Revised Statutes); working with parents (always deferential to parents’ preferences short of child abuse or neglect) and children to improve coping skills and devise more effective strategies to deal with the challenges of child-rearing; identifying particular family problems, challenges, and needs that are having or can reasonably be expected to have a significant impact on the child’s welfare; and recommending to the Administration interventions and assistance that are conducive to the continued provision of a safe and healthy home environment for the child.
   
   (a): An FSCW shall be assigned to a parent when
   
   (i): a parent requests it, (ii): a Community Facilitator (CF) recommends it,
   
   (iii): the Administration deems it necessary through a Parental State-Disengagement Determination,
   
   (iv): a parent declines to participate in CPSMs or, alternatively, to attend a PSDD,
   
   (v): the Administration deems it necessary as the result of an investigation into an allegation of Child Abuse or Neglect, or (vi): to prospective adoptive parents upon initiation of adoption proceedings.
   
   (b): An FSCW shall be authorized to recommend targeted financial and material assistance to parents, according to criteria to be developed by the Administration.
   
   (i): An FSCW shall be authorized to predicate the receipt of such assistance on the parent’s participation in CPSMs, if the parent is not already participating in them.
   
   (ii): The FSCW shall assist the parent, with substantial deference to parental autonomy, in self-monitoring parental choices, considering how well or poorly those choices serve the child’s welfare, and contemplating alternatives that might serve the child’s welfare better. The FSCW will be trained to be a parental resource rather than an imposing authority in this process.
   
   (4): If either the FSCW or CF determine that a child is not in imminent physical danger but that the child’s long-term welfare is being substantially compromised (according to the definition of Abuse or Neglect defined in 20-8-140 of the SHF Revised Statutes) by the child’s current home environment, (a): the parent can voluntarily submit to a process of Intensive Community Intervention (ICI), or
   
   (b): the Administration shall investigate and determine if, by a preponderance of the evidence, the Administration’s determination accords with that of the FSCW or CF.
   
   (i): If the Administration finds by a preponderance of the evidence that the child’s long-term welfare is being substantially compromised, the Administration shall initiate ICI.
   
   (ii): If the Administration does not find that the child’s long-term welfare is being substantially compromised, then all adult parties will be brought together for a determination of how to proceed, which might include reassigning the parent to a different community, reassigning a new FSCW to the parent, or, if the parent prefers, maintaining the current FSCW and Community (and thus CF).
   
   (c): Intensive Community Intervention (ICI) requires the voluntary involvement of Community and extended family members, as well as of teachers and others involved in the child’s life, working with the parent to rectify and remedy the problems that have been identified as substantially compromising the child’s long-term welfare. ICI strategies always include the determination of a designated period after which the case will be reviewed, and can include any combination of the following:
   
   (i): parental behavior modification efforts, closely monitored by Community and extended family members, utilizing whatever institutional assistance is required (such as drug rehabilitation programs),
   
   (ii): temporary in-home residence of Community or extended family member to assist the parent,
   
   (iii): temporary placement of the child with a Community or extended family member,
   
   (iv): limited or monitored parental contact with the child, and/or
   
   (v): professional assistance in concert with the Community and extended family assistance.
   
   (5): If as the result of an investigation into allegations of child abuse or neglect, or if an FSCW or CF determines that a child is in imminent physical danger; or if, after the designated period for an ICI, both the FSCW and CF determine that the ICI has been unsuccessful; or if an ICI was impossible due to a lack of willing extended family or Community members, the Administration will initiate a child custody hearing, adhering to the following guidelines:
   
   (a): The Administration must find, by clear and convincing evidence, that the child’s long-term welfare is being substantially compromised, or that the child is in imminent physical danger, before parental rights can be wholly or partially terminated.
   
   (b): The value of affective bonds and remaining in the child’s familiar home shall be given full weight as important, but not entirely decisive, factors in consideration of the child’s custody arrangements.
   
   (c): Parental rights shall be terminated or limited only to the extent necessary to preserve the child’s safety and to secure the child’s long-term welfare.
   
   (i): This Act imposes no presumption concerning the number of people that may be granted parental rights regarding a particular child, nor the precise scope of such rights in any given instance.
   
   (ii): Preference will always be given to preserving and encouraging established healthy affective bonds between adults and the child, rather than severing such bonds in pursuit of parental exclusivity.
   
   (iii): Partial, delineated parental rights may be granted to various adults, who must devise decision making guidelines commensurate with their various parental rights, with the assistance of an FSCW.
   
   (iv): The Administration shall generate guidelines for relinquishing the rights and responsibilities associated with partial parental rights commensurate with the extent of those rights and responsibilities, and in accord with the child’s best interest, ensuring continuity of comprehensive parental services.
   
   (v): “Parent,” for the purposes of this statute, does not refer to anyone with limited parental rights, but only to those with primary custodial rights, to be fully defined by the Administration.
   
   (d): Consideration of custodial alternatives shall be given concurrently with consideration of the parent’s, and others’, custodial rights.
   
   (i): The termination or diminution of parental rights do not necessarily result in an immediate or eventual loss of physical custody: The child will always be placed in the best available home, all factors considered, even if parental rights have been revoked from, or not yet granted to, the adult in whose custody the child is placed.
   
   (ii): Preference will be given, in order, to (1) extended family members who are also members of the same Community as the parent, (2) other Community members, and (3) other extended family members, in any change of custody of the child, whether it is a temporary arrangement, the placement of the child in a foster home, or an adoption proceeding. The Administration has the authority to supersede or alter the ranking of these preferences in accord with particular circumstances.
   
   (iii): No racial preferences beyond those implicit in the preferences above shall be implemented.
   
   (iv): If the child can not be placed in a home according to the above preferences, and the Administration determines, by clear and convincing evidence, that the child’s safety or welfare is too drastically compromised in his/her current home to leave him/her there, the child will be placed in foster care and adoptive parents will be sought, with the parent retaining those rights of visitation, if any, that the Administration finds contribute to rather than detract from the child’s long-term welfare.
   
   (e): Prospective adoptive parents must be members of a Community for one year prior to adoption, and must be recommended by their FSCW and the CF of the Community, and by a majority vote of both the community to which they belong and the Community from which the child is being adopted.
   
   (f): A mother may not put her child up for adoption until 36 hours after the birth of the child if the decision was made in writing at least two months prior to birth, or three weeks after the birth of the child if the decision was not made in writing at least two months prior to the birth of the child.
   
   (6): Extended family members, as defined in subsection (a), have the right to maintain a relationship with the child, subject only to the limitations delineated in subsection (b).
   
   (a): An extended family member is, for the purposes of this statute,
   
   (i): any blood relative of any parent (as defined in section 2 of this Act) that the child has ever had, who has formed a healthy affective bond with the child, as determined by clear and convincing evidence, according to criteria to be delineated by the Administration,
   
   (ii): any other individual who, in a relationship sanctioned by any parent (as defined in section 2 of this Act), has formed a healthy affective bond with the child, as determined by clear and convincing evidence, according to criteria to be delineated by the Administration.
   
   (b): The legal rights of extended family members (as defined in subsection (a)) to access to the child are limited in the following ways:
   
   (i): No parent shall ever be obligated to relinquish temporary physical custody of a child to any current non-parent, unless by a formal hearing of the Administration the non-parent’s ability to have occasional temporary physical custody of the child, as opposed to mere visitation rights with parental supervision, is held, by clear and convincing evidence, to be vital and indispensable to the child’s long-term welfare, though the parent can rebut this finding by demonstrating by a preponderance of the evidence that any occasional relinquishment of temporary custody to the petitioning non-parent would be contrary to the child’s long-term welfare. If a finding in favor of the petitioning non-parent is made, the amount of occasional temporary physical custody shall be limited to the least possible to satisfy the needs of the child’s long-term welfare. The parent has the right of appeal; the non-parent has no right of appeal.
   
   (ii): Non-parents with rights of access to a child are required to exercise reasonable self-restraint regarding the amount of access they demand, the degree of inconvenience they impose on the parent and other family members, and any disruptions or tensions that their relationship with the child may cause to or among the parent, family, or child. The Administration shall draft explicit guidelines regarding these issues.
   
   (iii): Non-parents with rights of access to a child, who do not belong to the parent’s Community, shall be required to attend the Community Parent Support Meetings (CPSMs) at a frequency to be determined by the Administration, taking into consideration all relevant factors, though the frequency required may not be more than once per month nor less than once per year.
   
   (iv): The parent can file complaints regarding non-parents with rights of access to the child, which the Administration is obligated to investigate, preliminarily through the agency of the child’s FSCW and CF. If the problem cannot be resolved to the satisfaction of all parties through the agency of the FSCW, CF, and CPSMs, a hearing must be held to determine if, by a preponderance of the evidence, the non-parent has abused his/her right of access to the child according to the criteria established by the Administration. If such a finding is made, then the non-parent shall have his/her right of access to the child revoked. Neither the parent nor the non-parent has the right of appeal regarding the determination of the Administration.
   
   (7): (20-8-140 includes conventional definitions of Abuse and Neglect, plus extreme emotional abuse). (This cross-referenced statute, 20-8-140, is fictional).

   (the discussion:)
   
   I. Social Policy Concerns Addressed by the Act
   
   This Act addresses the care and custody of children, including the rights and responsibilities of extended family and community members involved in a child’s life, the procedures for identifying and responding to child abuse and neglect, and the procedures for reassigning legal custody of a child. The purpose of this Act and the responsibility of the Administration is to facilitate communities and families in providing healthy and stable homes for children by means of mutual support, encouragement, involvement, oversight, and, in the last resort, reassignment of a child’s custodial arrangements, among family and community care givers. It is based on the principle that the state should be a proactive agent and vehicle of the people, to be utilized in conjunction with other social institutions in the facilitation of the welfare of its residents, rather than a reactive intervener of last resort, standing aside to permit preventable failure and subsequent suffering, and only then stepping in to pick up the pieces at greater public expense and with less efficacy.
   
   This Act accordingly reconceptualizes the state’s role, relinquishing its theoretical commitment to initial minimal intrusion on family autonomy until a threshold is reached triggering a sudden extreme and generally inefficacious intervention (see Clare Huntington, “Mutual Dependence in Child Welfare,” 82 Notre Dame L. Rev. 2007, 1485: 1497-1505), and, in its place, constructing a state-family-community system which institutionalizes support to families prior to, and in prevention of, the failure of a family to provide for a child’s welfare.
   
   The Act is characterized by two essential innovations: 1) a legal construct called “Community,” which mediates, buffers, and articulates the primarily coincidental and only marginally or superficially conflicting real interests of parent, child, and state; and 2) a proactive rather than reactive approach to child welfare policy. The Act meets the challenge of reconstructing and refining, through legal artifice, a traditional and organically produced social institutional form (i.e., community) that has grown increasingly attenuated with the growth of modern individualism, while not violating the Constitutional 14th Amendment liberty interests of parents (and others) which give that cultural individualism legal teeth. It does so in order to meet the corresponding political and legal challenge of increasing the constant and constructive involvement of the state in family and community life in order to decrease the extreme and often destructive involvement made more frequently necessary by its absence (or less comprehensive and humanized presence).
   
   The central innovation of this Act is the introduction of the legal reincarnation of the Community, which serves, with focused intentionality in its new form as a legal construct, to mediate the tensions and alliances among the interests of parent, child, and state, and as a buffer coordinating the functions of family and state in more cooperative and mutually accommodating ways. It provides an arena of support, communication, negotiation, and resolution. It is a medium of both state coercion and parental resistance, the conflict between the two channeled, filtered, or dissipated according to the moderating, focusing, or amplifying influence of a middle-range of social organization through which both the individual wills of parents and the corporate will of society, via the agency of the state, must pass. It provides a familiar and intimate zone in which children have an increased opportunity to formulate and express their will, in which subcultural diversity can hold out against an often overreaching and categorically biased state demand for conformity, but in which authentic child abuse and neglect has reduced opportunity to hide. While no law or institution can either eliminate child abuse and neglect or erase all errors of overcontrol or undercontrol, of false positives and false negatives, the Community is designed to lower the rate of both child abuse and neglect itself and of errors in detecting it at both extremes, and to coordinate the freedom of parents to raise their children as they see fit with the desire of the state to ensure that those children are raised in a safe, healthy, and nurturing home.
   
   The Community, as defined in this Act, 1) humanizes the state, 2) provides parents with improved due process protections, 3) channels information to the state to assist in accurate administrative decision making, 4) accommodates and protects diverse practices, 5) reduces institutionalized bias on the basis of race, ethnicity, English language proficiency, or social class, 6) mobilizes and moderates local normative control in service to child and family welfare, 7) channels relevant information and guidance to parents to improve parental decision-making, 8) facilitates continuity without sacrificing flexibility, 9) preserves and fosters rather than severs healthy affective bonds, 10) provides a buffer for strained relationships among adults involved in a child’s life, 11) provides a vehicle for including the child in the process, and, most fundamentally, 12) provides a vehicle of proactive state support of parents and families instead of state reaction to structurally-facilitated family failure.

   Log in to Reply