When Family Preservation Is Fatal
City Journal Audio
Manhattan Institute
4.7 • 657 Ratings
🗓️ 21 March 2018
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dennis Saffran and Seth Barron discuss New York City's misguided family-reunification policies, which can have fatal consequences for children in distressed homes.
In the Summer 1997 Issue of City Journal, Saffran wrote an article entitled "Fatal Preservation," which chronicled attempts by New York's social-services agencies to keep children with their troubled and abusiveparents. The policy proved tragic for kids like six-year-old Elisa Izquierdo, killed at the hands of her crack-addicted mother in 1995. Elisa's mother had regained custody of her daughter over the opposition of relatives and teachers. Too many other New York City children have met similar fates.
More than 20 years later, Saffran finds that, on balance, little has changed. "Many in the social-work establishment, including officials in the administrations of New York City's last two mayors . . . have remained hostile to [reforms] and committed to the old family-preservation orthodoxy."
Dennis Saffran is a Queens-based appellate attorney, writer, and former GOP candidate for the New York City Council. He can be reached on Twitter @dennisjsaffran.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, Ten Blocks listeners. I'm John Stossel. I've started to make videos of some of the articles in City Journal some of the things you're hearing on this podcast. Check them out at the City Journal editor Brian Anderson. |
| 0:30.6 | Thanks for joining us for the Ten Blocks podcast featuring urban policy and cultural commentary with City Journal editors, contributors, and special guests. |
| 0:41.6 | Hi, everyone. Welcome to Ten Blocks, the official podcast of City Journal. This is your host for |
| 0:47.3 | today, Seth Barron, and our guest is Dennis Safran. Dennis is an attorney and writer based in |
| 0:53.4 | Queens. He's a regular contributor to City |
| 0:55.9 | Journal, the Federalist, National Review, the Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. His latest essay for |
| 1:02.5 | City Journal is entitled Massacre of the Innocence. New York's misguided family reunification |
| 1:09.1 | policies continue to have fatal consequences. |
| 1:12.1 | Dennis, thanks for joining us. |
| 1:13.6 | Thank you, Seth. |
| 1:14.6 | Happy to be here. |
| 1:15.6 | So in your piece, you talk about the history of how New York City has dealt with and today |
| 1:22.6 | deals with vulnerable children in abusive households. Could you sketch this out for us? |
| 1:30.6 | Sure. What I primarily talk about is a policy that dates back to the 1980s nationwide, |
| 1:40.1 | or the 1970s known as family preservation, |
| 1:44.7 | which sounds like something social conservatives would dream up, |
| 1:48.3 | sounds like something Rick Centurum would be for. |
| 1:51.1 | But actually, it's a policy of the progressive hard left, |
| 1:59.9 | which was to try at all cost to keep abused children with the biological |
| 2:07.9 | parents or very often with the step parents or step boyfriends who abused them. Now it was a reaction |
| 2:16.2 | to excesses on the other side or alleged excesses, but some of |
| 2:21.5 | them were real, where up until the 60s or 70s, there may have been an over-eagerness to remove |
... |
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