Notes From a Cluttered Desk

Notes from a Cluttered Desk features reflections and insights from Professor Esther Wattenberg on current and reoccuring practice and policy challenges in child welfare. Esther’s posts are, quite literally, her notes from her cluttered desk.

October 2015

Attachment: Providing a Sense of Competency and Empowerment For Vulnerable Children in High-Risk Families

By Esther Wattenberg|2016-12-01T19:32:53-06:00October 2nd, 2015|Categories: Field Notes|Tags: attachment, empowerment, Notes From a Cluttered Desk, positive bonds|

Esther Wattenberg, September 2015 From time to time, a concerned visitor to my office will make a polite inquiry, after glancing at my cluttered desk: Have I heard of something called a “filing cabinet”? My muffled response is usually along these lines: “Yes, and I hope that person received the Nobel Prize for invention.” Occasionally, [...]

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April 2015

O The Harm that Good People Do: When a Guiding Principle in Child Welfare is Re-Arranged from ‘Well-being’ to ‘Safety’

By Esther Wattenberg|2015-04-13T12:03:45-05:00April 13th, 2015|Categories: Featured@CASCW|Tags: child safety, CPS Task Force, Notes From a Cluttered Desk, well-being|

The Star Tribune editorial supporting the Governor’s Task Force on the Protection of Children, “A start, but press on to prevent child deaths,” (April 2, 2015), should be met with a note of caution: Essentially, the 93 recommendations have substantially changed the emphasis of Child Protection from “well-being to “safety.” In this directive, we have [...]

June 2014

Special Op-Ed Feature—The Search for Insight in Measuring Poverty: Does Personal Charity Have a Role?

By Esther Wattenberg|2016-12-01T19:33:01-06:00June 27th, 2014|Categories: Featured@CASCW|Tags: Notes From a Cluttered Desk, poverty|

With powerful search engines spawning tidal waves of data, we are in a restless search for responses that will create an optimistic future for our children. For those of us who worry about vulnerable children in high-risk families, the search is especially urgent. Since “neglect” is a major entry point into the Child Welfare system, [...]

March 2014

Why the Elderly Should Care About What is Happening to the Very Young: The Intergenerational Connection
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Why the Elderly Should Care About What is Happening to the Very Young: The Intergenerational Connection

Why the Elderly Should Care About What is Happening to the Very Young: The Intergenerational Connection

By Esther Wattenberg|2014-08-29T14:01:22-05:00March 31st, 2014|Categories: Featured@CASCW|Tags: Notes From a Cluttered Desk|

Glancing at the several piles of clutter on my desk, variously labeled as "Exposing the Achievement Gap and Its Consequences," I am tempted to rename this series, "Notes from a Cluttered Mind." "Putting socks on the octopus" may be the most accurate summary of where we are in our persistent search for closing the achievement [...]

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January 2014

How Social Justice was Inserted into the Framework of Child Welfare

By Esther Wattenberg|2014-08-29T14:01:28-05:00January 13th, 2014|Categories: Featured@CASCW|Tags: Notes From a Cluttered Desk|

The Child Welfare narrative, for some historians, is linked to this observation of a behavioral economist: "The fate of a child is determined by the accident of birth: to whom that child is born." Thus, the wheel of fate, the luck of the draw, fate without pity and fairness begins the drama of a child's [...]

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November 2013

An Intergenerational Link to Trauma

By Esther Wattenberg|2016-12-01T19:33:05-06:00November 18th, 2013|Categories: Featured@CASCW|Tags: healing, historical trauma, Notes From a Cluttered Desk, parenting, racism, trauma|

Here are a few scattered notes from a seminar entitled, “The Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma: Recovering Humanity; Repairing Generations,” held Saturday, October 5th, at the Law School at the University of Minnesota. What drew my attention was not only the subject, “transmission of trauma,” a child welfare issue of central importance, but also the auspices [...]

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