Spectrum News
If a state decides to remove poverty from its definitions of child neglect, it must also provide resources to help alleviate that poverty, said Jill Duerr Berrick, a Professor of Social Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley. “Telling the public not to report poverty (because it’s not maltreatment), or telling social workers not to substantiate only-poverty cases is important, but it’s equally important to give the public and — especially — to give social workers the tools they need to help parents whose children are suffering because of poverty,” Berrick wrote in an email