Equating Poverty With Abuse?

"Sue has no criminal convictions and a history of only minor drug use. She's gainfully employed as a provider of homecare assistance for people with disabilities and has her own clean apartment. When social services took her child, she was guilty of poverty and despair, not abuse and neglect."

"Often, a family's poverty is confused with 'neglect,'" [Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform] wrote. "Indeed, the director of intake for child protective services in Denver has acknowledged that children sometimes are taken away just because their parents are down on their luck, out of work or unable to provide adequate shelter."