| F. Culture Must be Defined Broadly |
|
Knowing
more about a family can help the court develop better dispositional
orders and achieve permanency for the child more quickly. The
narrow cultural definition of a family by race and ethnicity begins the
process. Questions of family heritage help define the
culture of a child and family in the narrowest sense.
More complex is the broader view of the people who come before the juvenile court in D&N cases. What about economic status, immigration status and even neighborhood history or community history? What standards should be explored in these cases as attorneys, judges and social workers walk through the course toward either reunification or termination of parental rights? The first step requires a look at the subcultural issues that apply across racial and ethnic lines: poverty, religion and faith, education and literacy, gender, age, mental and physical disabilities, and sexual orientation. Next we must overlay the subcultural factors over the cultural identity of the family to develop what is called cultural and subcultural context. |