Across the country, the child welfare system is under extraordinary pressure. Family stress is rising, the workforce is in crisis, funding policies are shifting away from prevention, and the needs of children and families continue to outpace the support they receive. Leaders are burning out. Families are breaking apart. And too often, the responses to this unraveling are more of the same—doubling down on the failed policies we know do not work and lead to increased child and family suffering.
But what if the system we’re working in wasn’t designed to heal in the first place? What if the pain we’re seeing—staff turnover, poor outcomes, racial disproportionality, and generational trauma—isn’t a sign that the system is broken, but a signal that it’s working to produce exactly the outcomes it was built to produce?
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