It's nice that Bella's legacy is a re-commitment to social services for children.
However, I think the culprit here is drugs, and I'm not optimistic that anything will be done to fix the damage drugs are doing to our people.
Making drug laws more strict is not the answer to the problem, imo. I think the problem to be addressed is WHY people turn to drugs and zone out of their lives. I'm not talking recreational drug use, but the type of drug abuse that saps your humanity and makes you into a creature whose sole purpose is to get more drugs. What is wrong with a culture that SO MANY of our fellow humans are lost enough that being drugged is preferable to living a life? I think we're too afraid to delve into that problem.
So in the meantime, social services will get some press coverage.
JMO.
The culprit here is apathy and the mistaken notion that reunification of the family is the desired and preferred outcome. This isnt about parents who want their kids with them.. this should be about the
SAFETY of the vulnerable. Simple. When dealing with patients, or elderly in the community, for example, it is always about safety..
Drugs arent always present.. plenty of abusive, neglectful parents out there that are mentally ill, not on drugs, dont cook, send their kids to school dirty, don't get them adequate medical care, are too immature and want to party, have no family or community support.. and the outcome is a child at risk. Add to that a foster care system that is broken, DCF policies that makes the child go visit parents in jail, often at great personal hardship to the child's caregivers, minimum standards as to parental expectations, social workers who want to show "reunification" as their outcome etc etc.
All these dead and abused children showing up in bags, on the sides of highways, in schools, etc etc. tells the tale. SAFETY of the child has been overlooked because the placement of these kids in other situations is difficult to accomplish. IMO
Nothing is going to change.. Where i live, if you were "darted" by DCF your file was always there and accessible.. a closed file meant nothing.. the social workers were supposed to search for any other concerns that were ever reported, EVER! Come on.. this is minimum.. where there is smoke there is fire. i am not really interested about divorced parents playing the system to get back at the other parent.. OH WELL.. it still needs to be followed through.
Time will tell if anything really changes..Maybe it is a start.. i hope so.
Anything i write is just my opinion.
