The document discusses a new policy by the Department of Job and Family Services to remove children from homes where the parents or guardians have a history of abuse, neglect, domestic violence or drug/alcohol offenses. The policy is based on social learning theory but may do more harm than good. It could overwhelm foster care systems and cause psychological harm to children by separating them from loving families. It also fails to consider that children can learn aggression from many sources beyond just their parents. Overall, the policy is deemed unethical due to these risks of making children's situations much worse.

1. Child Endangerment 1
Running Header: Child Endangerment in Any town, USA
Breaking News! Parents and guardians to lose kids left and
right! New Rulings in Any town!

2. Child Endangerment Laws Change for Residents of Any town, USA:
Social Leaning Theory-How Will This Affect You?
Elizabeth Hall
Kaplan University
Criminology CJ 102
Greg Matoesian
February 9, 2010
Child Endangerment Laws Change for Residents of Any town, USA:
Social Leaning Theory-How Will This Affect You?
Recently the Department of Job and Family Services decided to implement a new policy based on the
Social Learning Theory. It was supposed that children who grow up with parents who have
documented abuse, neglect, domestic violence, or drug and alcohol charges are committing child
endangerment. The new policy states that any parent, guardian and or caregiver with documented
offenses of this kind will have their children removed from their homes to be placed in the care of the
state or foster care services until the perpetrator can provide documented proof that he or she has been
free of offenses for at least six months and have completed all classes that they have deemed necessary
such as: alcohol and or drug treatment programs, counseling, family therapy sessions, mental health
treatment, and anger management, life skill, and or parenting classes. The Department of Job and
Family Services cited the Social Learning Theory as the basis and support of this new policy as a result
of research done suggesting that “aggressive children have parents who use similar tactics when
dealing with others.” They went on to say that “the children of wife batterers are far more likely to use
aggressive tactics themselves than children in the general population, especially if the victims (their
mothers) suffer psychological distress from the abuse” (Siegel, 2007, p. 110).
Social Learning Theory states that individuals learn aggression from watching other people being
rewarded for aggressive behavior. Advocates of this new policy argue that removing the children from
the home reduces the extent that the individual child is exposed to such aggression, thereby reducing
aggression in the child. The possible benefits of this policy include reduced juvenile crimes, and in
time, reduced adult crimes being committed in our society. The possible negative effects on
implementing this policy are many.
If we as a society began removing children from their homes, and placing the full burden of raising
them on the state and it’s foster care programs, just because a person in the home had a single domestic
violence offense, drug charge, or other charge that falls into this category, the state would soon run out
of places to house these children, and the cost to the taxpayer would be phenomenal. What if the person
had committed the crime before they had children, would charges still apply? Would the authorities
come and take the child from birth if the charges were obtained before the child was born?
There is also the issue of double jeopardy, since documented charges would seem to infer that the case
had already gone through the judicial system and punishments would have already been given and
served out. To then come back and remove the children would be adding another punishment to the
offender, and seems unconstitutional, unethical, and immoral.
One could argue that putting these children in overcrowded conditions that would arise from the
implementation of this policy would do more harm than good. Not all juveniles placed in foster care are
there due to bad parenting. Some of these kids end up there because the parents can no longer control

3. their behavior, or in between doing stints in juvenile hall. All parents or guardians who lose their
children would not have the same degree of offense, which runs the risk of kids from better
environments being taught through the same Social Theory negative behavior and aggression from
other kids.
Because the actual definition of Social Learning Theory suggests that since:
• Human beings and the actions they take are derived from the knowledge gained from life
experience and watching others.
• Behavior is maintained by rewards received and negated when chastised or unenthusiastic
responses are received.
• Aggressive actions are seen as learned reactions to situations experienced in life.
• People are not born violent, but learn violent behavior through experience.
• People learn violent tendencies through watching others directly or even through the media
• Behavior Modeling- people learn violence through family interactions, environmental
experiences, and mass media
(Siegel, n.d.)
Aggressive behavior could be learned from many different sources besides their own parents.
Another ethical issue in implementing this policy would be the complete unraveling of the family
model that this country was founded on. The children placed in these situations would grow up with a
diminished sense of family values and belonging, since more children would be removed under this
policy than would have other wise been placed as wards of the state including children whose families
would have taken good care of them and are loved.
The American Academy of Pediatrics claims that roughly 800,000 children spend time in foster care
in any given year, and they have many medical, psychological, and dental health needs which go unmet
every year (American Academy of Pediatrics, n.d.).
Frontline did a special on the failure of our current system to adequately protect the children placed
in foster care. Statistics for the year 2000 show that
• A total of 556, 000 children in the foster care system, 291,000 of these were new cases in 2000.
• Typical time length that children were in the system was 33 months.
• Many of these children were placed in at least five different residences before exiting the
system.
• There were 2.8 million statements given to child protective services in 2000, with 1.7 million
cases warranting investigation, netting roughly 500,000 validated cases of abuse or neglect of
children in the foster care system.
• Since the government began giving federal foster care assistance in 1960, the number of
juveniles in the system has grown extensively.
Casey Family Programs performed a survey of former foster care children. The results show that:
• 13 % have been homeless at least one time after leaving the program
• 15 % have been arrested
(Frontline, 2010)
The Texas Foster Care Transitions program notes that when juveniles reach 18, they are thrown
from state assistance to virtually no help at all and no support systems to fall back on. This often
propels them into our criminal justice system, because they did not receive adequate training while in
the system to know how to function independently. Many have emotional and mental issues. They are
released into society to fend for themselves, and have a hard time not succumbing to: homelessness,

4. poverty, victimization, criminalization, illness, unwanted pregnancy, and dysfunctionality (Texas
Foster Care Transitions Project, n.d.)
The impact on those involved in this situation is large. Offenders would have to take time off of
work to complete all of the programs that could be required, children of otherwise loving parents taken
from them and sent to a strange environment gaining psychological problems along the way from being
moved around from place to place, and a negative sense of self worth. The court systems would be
more crowded than they already are causing more taxpayer money to be spent on more personnel.
I think that after thinking about all of the above scenarios, this policy should not be considered
ethical because there are too many risks of turning a semi bad situation into a much worse situation for
the child involved.
I also think that the Department of Job and Family Services did misinterpret the Social Learning
Theory because it failed to take into consideration that children learn bad habits and aggression from
many more sources besides their own parents. Although, some parents do set a terrible example for
their kids, that is generally the exception to the rule, and just because children are reprimanded to the
state, there is no guarantee that a better example would be set for the child once they become part of the
system.
Reference:
American Academy of Pediatrics. (n.d.). Children’s Health Topics: Foster Care. Retrieved from
the World Wide Web February 07, 2010
http://www.aap.org/healthtopics/fostercare.cfm
Frontline. (2010). Failure to Protect: Foster Care Statistics. Retrieved from the World Wide
Web February 06, 2010
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/fostercare/inside/stats.html
Siegel, L. J. (2007). Criminology: The Core (3 ed.). Belmont, Ca. Cengage Learning; p.
rd
109-110.
Texas Foster Care Transitions Project. (n.d.) Executive Summary. Retrieved from the World
Wide Web February 06, 2010
http://www.cppp.org/files/4/all%20grown%20up.pdf