Social workers feed in data on suspected abuse and neglect, and a decision pops out. Officials say the system eliminates the previous scattershot approach. Critics say the human element is slighted.
There's no time to wash away the smell of sour milk from the baby's skin, so the mother wipes the dozing infant's face with the filthy bib hanging from his neck. "WIC cares about me," it reads, a reference to the free food program for poor women and children.
Social worker Ladore Winzer has just told the mother she will detain the 11-month-old boy and process him this night into foster care.
It's after dusk and the slim, efficient social worker is late returning home to her own family, stuck for now in the middle of this ghetto vista. Cars swerve around a lampshade; a graffiti tribute to a dead man runs across a cinder block wall; a hunched homeless man pushes his cart across the grass-tufted sidewalk.
"If I'm good, can I get my baby back in three months?" the mother asks, conjuring a weak smile in an attempt to seal the proposal.
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