The Massachusetts Department of Children and Families needs significant reform to prevent future child abuse cases like the death of Bella Bond, said Senate President Stanley Rosenberg on Boston Public Radio Thursday.
Rosenberg, who himself grew up in foster care, advocated for reducing the number of caseloads per social worker, boosting the amount of training social workers get, and updating what he called the agency's "outdated" best practices.
He criticized the agency for swinging from extreme to extreme in response to public abuse cases, instead of forming a more concrete guiding policy.
"We have to stop going with the wind," he said. "If a kid dies or is injured by a foster home, we start leaving kids in the biological home. If a child is hurt in a biological home, we start ripping all the kids out and putting them in foster care. You have to set a good policy, set a course, and stick with it."
Rosenberg said the onus is on legislators to hold the agency accountable, but that citizens of the commonwealth should also feel significant responsibility for its actions.
"It's the largest power the state of Massachusetts has, since we don't have the death penalty in Massachusetts," he said. "The largest power, the most significant power, is removing a child from their family. At that point, the child becomes the responsibility of all of us collectively...Therefore we need to be treated as if they were all our children, because they are all our children."
To hear more from Senate President Rosenberg—including his take on casinos and the opioid crisis—in tune in to Boston Public Radio above.
