Of Pots of Gold and Pots of Glue: Society's Maltreatment of America's Poorest Children and Their Families

This article reports data from two qualitative studies with child welfare lowyers, judges, masters, and social workers (N = 59). Two themes emerged: the first is that child welfare involvement occurs within a broader societal context, and that child protective services and courts are called to address a broad range of concerns with severely inadequate resources. Participants saw that the paucity of resources as evidence of lack of societal concern for poor children and their families. They attribute lack of concern to ignorance of the circumstances faced by these vulnerable populations and to disregard due to their lack of political power.