This is in conversation from Apple News. I'm Shimita Basso. Today,

reimagining a child welfare system that supports families instead of separating them.

If you're a parent or if you've even just watched kids for an afternoon, you've almost definitely been in a situation like this. You're out with the kids, you've got your back turn for just a few

seconds, and before you know it, a kid is missing. Your stomach drops, mild to medium panic,

you search around and, sure enough, they didn't get too far.

You're reunited, you breathe a sigh of relief, and that's the end of it.

That's what happened to a woman named Vanessa Peoples, but for her it wasn't the end of

a story. It was just the beginning. In 2017 she was at a family picnic in a park in Aurora, Colorado with her two sons, a two-year-old and a four-year-old.

The two-year-old wandered away, and Vanessa went running after him.

But by the time she got there, a passer-by had grabbed her toddler.

Vanessa told the woman, that's my son, but the woman had already called the police and refused to give him back until the officers arrived.

And the police officer initially didn't believe it was Vanessa's son.

Vanessa's family vouched for her and she got her son back,

but the officer didn't let her go right away.

The police officer gave her a ticket for child abuse

because of that minute long lapse in her care for her son when he strayed away and so now she became under the

supervision and surveillance of the child welfare system.

We'll come back to what that meant for Vanessa and her family in a little bit.

But the person you've been hearing tell her story is Dorothy Roberts.

She's a professor of law and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of the book

Torn Apart. She has spent more than two decades studying the way that the child welfare system affects families,

disproportionately black families like Vanessa's.

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