In the Family's Best Interest: An Assessment of Miami-Dade's Child Welfare Reforms

Abstract

Families are one of the most important structures in American society. Society relies on families to raise children to become functioning adults. We treat families as private responsibilities in the US, but really all of society has a stake in raising children who thrive. America’s child welfare system has been entrusted with the responsibility of ensuring that children are raised in safe families. All parents, however, are not equally positioned: some have faced violence or discrimination; others are physically or intellectually disabled; others have been abused or are addicts. The child welfare system addresses the breakdown of families by blaming parents, when there is often less redress for the structural problems that ail them. Historically, child welfare reforms have failed to address and acknowledge the structural constraints parents are facing that are intimately entangled with child maltreatment. Through analysis of recidivism cases and appeal cases from Miami-Dade’s Juvenile Dependency Court, this study assesses Miami-Dade’s Community-Based Care model, a child welfare reform implemented in 2007. This study assesses whether the reform is successful in improving due process failures and child outcomes. These cases provide evidence that Miami-Dade’s Community-Based Care Model has failed to address the greater structural needs in the child welfare system.