Keeping Children Safe With Their Families, Not From Their Families—Foster Care, Transformed

According to Child Rights, more than 672,000 children spent time in foster care in 2019, and every day more than 400,000 children in the United States live in foster care. Labor and placement shortages make it difficult for the child welfare system to meet the needs of children and families. Amelia Franck Meyer, child protection veteran and social entrepreneur, believes that providing children with an “uninterrupted sense of belonging” is key to their development. She founded Alia Innovations, a national do-tank that helps child protection officials partner with parents and young people to transform child protection and foster care. Ashoka's Manmeet Mehta spoke with Dr. Franck Meyer about what an evolved system would look like, how we would get there, and the long-term cost and savings of reform.

Manmeet Mehta: Amelia, why is belonging so important in childhood?

Amelia Franck Meyer: Because children are vulnerable, and they know it, safety comes from having a constant, caring protector who can provide an uninterrupted sense of belonging. Children do better when their protector is someone they know, trust and love. For decades, we've assumed that physical safety is more important than belonging, even if that means being moved from house to house. But research overwhelmingly shows that moving children between caregivers has long-term negative predictive effects on children. If parents are unable to ensure the safety of a child, we help systems identify a family member or trusted adult.

Mehta: Let's go back a bit: how does the foster care system work? How do children enter and move through the system?

Frank Meyer: Neglect accounts for over 80% of children in care, which is often linked to issues of parental substance abuse, poverty and other issues that disproportionately affect communities of color due to effects of systemic racism. Once in the system, Black, Brown and Indigenous children are separated from their families at disproportionately higher rates than white children. Black children in America have a 53% chance of being investigated as potential victims of child abuse by the time they turn 18. That's 16% more than all children combined.

Mehta: What cultural assumptions shape this system?

Franck Meyer: As a society, we tend to punish people who hurt or neglect children by taking children away from them. But it is actually the children who are punished by this. We need to question this cultural need to punish and the idea that children can be redistributed to unrelated individuals or institutional settings without consequences. We also need to challenge the assumption that the quality of parenthood is unrelated to personal circumstances that can lead to conditions such as poverty or substance use. In other words, we need to consider "what happened" to the parents, rather than "what went wrong" with them.

Mehta: What is your vision for orienting the foster care system around belonging?

Franck Meyer: The current system perpetuates intergenerational trauma. When parents are punished, their children are disconnected and vulnerable to the perpetuation of the cycle. To prevent this, we need to ensure not only that the children are safe, but that their parents have what they need to educate them safely. This means rethinking the provision of family support, as currently funding is only made available after the child is separated from their parents. The aim is to redirect resources to support families and ensure that this support comes from community systems rather than the government which has the referral authority if a family is in trouble.

Mehta: To change the system, you have to work closely with the system...

Frank Meyer: Yes. At Alia, we partner with innovators and early adopters who know things need to change, but need help to make that change happen. Using tools co-designed with people with lived expertise, Alia prepares system leaders to become trusted partners so they can co-design new ways of working with parents, youth and others without causing further damage. In order to change mindsets, redirect resources and transform practices, it is crucial that leaders do their own work first so they can share power and partner more...