"The state, however, has since returned to high-level dysfunction, including a recent case in which foster kids were being transported in handcuffs and leg shackles — a practice that has now been prohibited"
I wonder what the sequence of events was where nobody said anything about putting shackles on kids that aren't prisoners or being arrested.
Don’t underestimate how unruly, disobedient, and oftentimes violent these children are.
In the best case, these children have been traumatized by their removal from a family, however dysfunctional. In the worst cases, they’ve suffered abuses that make people support the death penalty. While none of those scars is written on a person, they do manifest in sudden outbursts of screaming, hitting, stealing, and scores more destructive behaviors. For a neglected child, negative attention is preferable to not existing, and if acting out is the only way to make your existence register to the outside world, so be it.
Many of those people who placed said children in shackles aren’t practiced in methods to manage traumatized children or understanding of their past, and identify them as ‘problematic’, not ‘traumatized’.
I'm surprised that nobody balked just for self-preservation reasons. I'd certainly be concerned about the legalities of shackling someone. Sounds like kidnapping to me.
>I wonder what the sequence of events was where nobody said anything about putting shackles on kids that aren't prisoners or being arrested.
I also wonder, because the default position is to not shackle kids obviously. Social workers really are good people who try their best in real hard situations (and dealing with 'at-risk' foster kids is one of the hardest areas of social work). It may be the case that this bad solution came out of solving something, like kids running away, or physically hurting themselves, other kids, or social workers - during transport. It's not totally fair to impugn motives, as others in this thread are, without at least understanding what it is they were trying to solve.
Again .. I'm not justifying or excusing this policy, but I do want to understand why this policy exists in context with realities on the ground encountered by good people doing really hard social work.
> because the default position is to not shackle kids
Being home schooled I've only seen the way kids in public school are treated from a distance and from the stories I've been told from people who are now adults. Based on what I've heard this sounds pretty consistent with the general attitude of public employees tasked with caring for children.
Let me rephrase that, but without the inflammatory assumptions: Given that social workers are good people who do very hard (thankless and low-paid) work - has anyone checked what the reasons were for instituting this policy.
We're all in agreement that the agency needs to explain why this policy was put in place (which has since been prohibited), because it isn't normal to shackle kids and potentially someone needs to be held accountable. But maybe we can do that without impugning social workers as bigots - don't you think?
I wonder what the sequence of events was where nobody said anything about putting shackles on kids that aren't prisoners or being arrested.