Helen Epstein notes that child services often "comes down hard on poor families." Why taking an impoverished child from his or her family can be dangerous:
In a series of court cases during the 1990s, many biological parents testified that when their children were eventually returned to them, they were so sick—with black eyes and skin rashes, for example—that they had to go straight to the hospital. Tobis cites one recent study that found that the rate of physical abuse in foster care was four times higher than abuse by parents in the city’s toughest neighborhoods. … Roughly 14,000 New York City children were in foster care in 2011, 70 percent fewer than in 1992. The rate of physical and sexual abuse of children also declined during this period, suggesting that reducing foster care placements has not put children at greater risk.
The Dish 