A reader writes:
I wrote you guys earlier in the year to say we in St Louis had dealt with our first case of a family giving up custody of their child because they did not have the financial capability to care for the child. However, this scenario never became an epidemic or even a trend … at least in St. Louis city.
I place emphasis on "city" because St. Louis City is its own municipal county and entity. The surrounding counties – St. Louis County, St. Charles County and Jefferson County – have the majority of lower-middle class and middle class families living there. For their offices, incoming cases have skyrocketed.
This new trend started several months after the recession began, coinciding with the time that unemployment benefits ran out for people that were recently laid off.
We had been questioning for some time why metropolitan cities had not seen an influx of child abuse/neglect cases or children entering foster care. We weren't looking at our surrounding area. If we had been, we would have seen the answer, because the city clientele weren't the people losing their jobs and homes. Our clientele were already embedded in poverty. The city government has established programs and resources to help just those people. The other counties, having never seen so many people in financial duress, did not have the programs, resources, or infrastructure to act preventatively for so many people at once.
Photo of a derelict factory in St. Louis by Flickr user MadAboutCows.
The Dish 