Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

OP asserted without evidence: "Obviously these agencies are vital."

GP questioned, and made a contrary assertion without evidence: "Are they? Seems that they do more harm than good."

Seems unfair to call out GP for not providing evidence, but not OP, especially since GP's claim was more moderate).



These agencies were instituted on public demand to reduce abuse at a societal level, and their missions were constituted with those harms in mind - hence the obviousness of those agencies being vital, at least at the time when they were instituted, with plenty of evidence back then for their necessity [1]. If they are no longer meeting those mission parameters and causing more harm than good, then we should demand evidence for that as well, should we not?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_protective_services#Hist...


They are not causing more harm than good on balance. However they are causing a lot of harm. they need to be reformed, but we need them.


Anecdotal, but I think I mentioned our kids were adopted. We adopted through the State, and underwent 6 months of training before being approved.

The stories of abuse and neglect were hair raising, and our kids had their own fair share before they came to us.

CPS exists as an alternative to cops doing this kind of work. When done right, they are compassionate and understand how to deal with kids in a variety of sm high stress situations. They do evaluations. They take kids out of homes safely. They do transport to foster care or elsewhere. They evaluate potential adoptive families.

When all done right. We know some fabulous workers doing incredibly hard work here.

We also know it’s easy to abuse the system, and they could use a lot more checks and balances.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: