Gaylynn Burroughs

Gaylynn Burroughs

Representative Works Blog at RH Reality Check (Reproductive Health) Too Poor to Parent? (Ms. Magazine)

Child Welfare System Child-Welfare System: a group of services designed to promote the well-being of children by ensuring safety, achieving permanency, and strengthening families to care for their children successfully. While the primary responsibility for child welfare services rests with the states, the federal government plays a major role in supporting states in the delivery of services through funding of programs and legislative initiatives. The child welfare system is a group of services designed to promote the well-being of children by ensuring safety, achieving permanency, and strengthening families to successfully care for their children.

CAPTA The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA), originally passed in 1974, provides federal funding to states in support of prevention, assessment, investigation, prosecution, and treatment activities. sets forth a minimum definition of child abuse and neglect

Child-Welfare System Not a single entity (departments of social services or child and family services) Specific procedures vary by state Contracted services can include foster care, residential treatment, mental health care, substance abuse treatment, parenting skills classes, domestic violence services, employment assistance, and financial or housing assistance

Child Welfare System The child welfare system is designed not as a way to assist parents in taking care of their children but as a way to punish parents for their failures by threatening to take their children away. Agencies' punitive function hits African American parents the hardest because they are the most likely to suffer from poverty and institutionalized discrimination and to be blamed for the effects on their children Read more: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/fostercare/caseworker/roberts.html#ixzz1b6Qgd9az

Child-Welfare Statistics On September 30, 2009, 424,000 children were in foster care in the United States, a decrease nationally of 23 percent from the 544,000 children in foster care on September 30, 2000. (Adoption and Foster Care Reporting System) black children in the child welfare system are placed in foster care at twice the rate for white children African American children, are more likely to be in foster care placement than receive in-home services, even when they have the same problems and characteristics as white children Read more: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/fostercare/caseworker/roberts.html#ixzz1b6RAwP99

Helen Benedict

Representative Works Sand Queen (novel) Lonely Soldier: the Private War of Women Serving in Iraq (non-fiction) The Lonely Soldier Monologues (play) The Edge of Eden (novel) The Opposite of Love (novel)

The Plight of Women Soldiers Female veterans are suffering double the rates of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder than male counterparts (RAND 2008) 135 female service members have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, and over 700 have been wounded (today’s statistics) As of February 2010 more than 212,000 women service members had been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan

Women in Combat • Women service members are still banned from participating in ground combat • Current arguments against women serving in combat: • Femininity is incompatible with combat • Male service members will try to “protect” female service members • Women would endanger men because of their lack of physical strength

Harassment and Assault Approximately 90% of rapes in the military are never reported In 2006, of 2,974 cases of sexual assault, only 292 went to military trial; in 2007 over 2,200 servicemen were investigated for sexual assault, and only 181 were prosecuted (tracking done by Pentagon) Most offenders received a reduction on rank or reduced pay

Gaylynn Burroughs