COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Children Services is tasked with protecting the safety, well-being, and permanency of children and families, but some experts say it has not escaped its origins as a system that separates.

Alexandra Citrin, senior associate at the Center for the Study of Social Policy, explained there is a long-standing belief foster care is the best and only intervention for families struggling with abuse or neglect, and she said separation particularly impacts families of color.

"At the beginning, the system didn't even serve children of color because they weren't deemed worthy," Citrin explained. "We then see the children services system separating Native children from their families and their culture to try and force assimilation, and separating Black children at a very high rate."

Citrin pointed out oppression and racism within children services are connected to systemic policies excluding families of color and do not create the social support families need.

The disparities are evident in other public systems rooted in racism, including juvenile justice. Currently, Black children represent 36% of the children in foster care in Ohio, while they represent 14% of children in the general population. Black and mixed-race children also experience more placements in the foster system than their white peers.

Research has found racial bias among people who report children to Children Services and among the caseworkers who assess a family's situation.

Robin Reese, executive director of Lucas County Children Services, said her staff is laser-focused on protecting children from abuse and neglect. When the focus is affected by poverty and the overwhelming number of cases workers are managing, she said it can unintentionally lead to racial disparities.

"We have some of the best people in this field, but the truth is, all of us come in with biases," Reese observed. "It impacts the way we do the work. And so, if you're a person of color, and you're poor, the risk of you having involvement in child protection is raised."

And Citrin noted the way child protection is funded also contributed to the history of separation. She emphasized prior to the passage of the Family First Prevention Services Act, federal funding streams including services to help keep children with their families were inadequate.

"Title IV-E up until very recently could only be used for foster care placements," Citrin stressed. "You didn't have the federal funding stream for child welfare services to serve families where children were able to remain home and in their community."

Title IV-E is the main federal funding source for child welfare systems. Citrin added states have also been limited in their ability to fund prevention services as child welfare agencies have to first pay for children who are placed in foster care as federal financing only covers part of the cost.

Part two of our series will examine the current state of children services and families served.

By Gabes Torres for Yes! Media. Broadcast version by Kathryn Carley for Maine News Service, reporting for the YES! Media-Public News Service Collaboration

Conversations around body positivity and body acceptance have grown over the past few years. In a way, this is progress. We are bolder in exposing and undoing fat-phobia, ableism, and other systems of body oppression that overtly and covertly exist in media, institutions, and our behaviors. There are more advertisements, clothing lines, and mainstream and social media platforms that attempt to promote body diversity.

This is long overdue, as systemic discrimination against weight, age, and different kinds of bodies in general have not only severed our own relationships with our bodies, but also have infiltrated our health care systems, pathologizing and excluding bodies that are not thin, abled, young, and White, resulting in poor quality of care. Body oppression disproportionately alienates us, specifically the bodies that do not fit the so-called standard of beauty, wholeness, and health. Capitalism and White supremacy have given us many reasons to hate our bodies, because they teach us to be ashamed of them-and to shame others.

In an article titled "Body Shame and Transformation," Sonya Renee Taylor describes the spiraling experience of body shame: "We berated and abused ourselves because we were berated and abused by others. We thought the outside voice was our own, and we let it run roughshod over our lives. And then we judged ourselves for judging ourselves, trapped on a hamster wheel of self-flagellation. Oh, honey, that is no way to live."

Shame is a social emotion and experience. It is always linked to our relationships and people's perceptions-or, rather, our perceptions of people's perceptions. Shame makes us question whether or not we truly belong as we are. Shame makes us nervously wonder about the things that make us "bad" or "wrong." In the case of body image, shame provokes us to want to hide. We hide our curves, our fat, and our softness. We hide the marks and scars that prove we made it out alive. We hide by altering the areas of our skin where our hairs grow and darker pigments reside. Shame makes us want to put a mask on.

Recent trends on social media and society at large have widely suggested that to overcome body image issues, we must be more audacious and loud about our love of our bodies. For many of us, it does help. There was a time when it was beneficial for me to publicly share my growing love for my body. I wrote and performed songs about it. I posted and tweeted selfies and images where I felt good about how I looked. It felt meaningful to resist and undermine the prevalence of Western beauty standards that made me hate my Brown, curvy body. However, the process did not help me address an inner conflict. I know I should love my body as it is, but there are days when it seems more like an abstraction-an idea that my body itself finds hard to take in. So to post about how beautiful I think my body is online sometimes feels artificial, like I'm convincing myself to believe in something that is not authentic. I feel ashamed for not having the consistency to believe the message of body positivity. I feel ashamed for having this shame. And there it goes again: the cycle of shame.

When this happens, we tend to look for ways to get rid of the body shame. Sometimes, this means seeking out what we are all socialized to do in order to solve (or hide) something: to consume. Do I need to find more body positive material and products? Do I need to hire a coach who addresses self-image? Do I need to buy more clothes and accessories that make me feel free and beautiful? The cycle of body shame continues in the allures of consumerism. Bhavika Malik shares similar observations on Polyesterzine: "The absolute and unrealistic pressure on people to love themselves transformed the body positivity movement into a toxic, profit-driven business opportunity."

In her book Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion, Jia Tolentino writes, "Mainstream feminism has also driven the movement toward what's called 'body acceptance,' which is the practice of valuing women's beauty at every size and in every iteration, as well as to diversify the beauty ideal." Tolentino explains how the diversification of what it means to be beautiful and acceptable is great, but the complexity lies in the fact that "Beauty is still of paramount importance." My interpretation of this is that for as long as beauty bears utmost importance, there will always be those who dictate the standard of beauty, and those who strive to meet these standards for the purpose of social approval. But perhaps, more specifically, meeting these standards is to remove the shame that interferes with our sense of belonging. It probably isn't body positivity that the system capitalizes on per se. It capitalizes on the shame we feel any time we do not feel like we fit in or are worthy of belonging.

In her aforementioned article, Sonya Renee Taylor discusses the interruption of the cycles of shame: the practice of radical self-love and compassion. We disrupt these systemic cycles by identifying the antidote, which is also the antithesis of what the system doles out: "The only way to beat that system is by giving ourselves something the system never will: compassion."

When was the last time you experienced compassion? Similar to shame, compassion is also a social experience. It also does not aim to produce and earn as a capitalist tool. We give and receive compassion in the context of relationships, including our relationships with ourselves. Whenever we hide, we isolate ourselves, which decreases our chances of easing the shame and disrupting its cyclical nature. It's hard to seek compassion, especially when we've been judged and rejected countless times before in our vulnerability. Even then, I'd like to believe that life is not static. Without dismissing our painful experiences, life is expansive enough to have new ones. More often than not, we take this journey of undoing shame step by step-inch by inch, even.

In taking this inch by inch, we remember the value of our bodies that transcend beyond projected and imposed standards of beauty, health, and wholeness. Taking from my earliest work, I'd like to share with you the timeless truth: "Our bodies are naturally designed to root for us. They self-heal, detect danger, connect us with others and the natural world. Our bodies invite us to rest and play in its kind and creative way. And with that, I realized that my body is not just the home I've always wanted, but the home that always wanted me."

Gabes Torres wrote this article for YES! Magazine. Torres is a psychotherapist, organizer and artist. Her work focuses on anti-colonial approaches and practices within the mental-health field. She also focuses on abolitionist organizing on a global scale. You can find most of her work on her official website, gabestorres.com, and social media platforms including Instagram. Follow her on Twitter at @gabestorres.

It can be challenging for parents and caregivers to shield their children from bigotry and hatred online, but there are a few tips they can follow.

Lindsay Schubiner, Momentum program director at the Western States Center, said the work is especially crucial because white nationalist groups are using the internet to recruit people.

She pointed out young people are developing identities and ideas in relationship to everything around them, including what they see and hear online.

"As hate violence and threats to democracy continue and bigotry and conspiracy theories reach further into the mainstream, young people see that, and it has an impact," Schubiner asserted. "It's really important for parents and caregivers to provide an open space to critically examine what all of that means to them and to their future and to their values."

About 45% of middle and high school students said they have been the victim of cyberbullying, according to a survey from the Cyberbullying Research Center. The survey also showed cyberbullying has been increasing over the past decade.

Schubiner stressed vigilance is the first key to ensuring kids are staying safe online. She noted for example, hate groups use jokes minimizing violence, scapegoating or straw man arguments to manipulate people online, tactics she said both kids and parents need to be aware of.

"Helping them to recognize the kinds of strategies that are intended to influence them can be a really powerful way to push back against this," Schubiner emphasized.

Schubiner encouraged parents and caregivers to listen openly and non-judgmentally to their kids' about their online experiences. She cautioned cutting off access to friends or to the internet can backfire because many white nationalists manipulate followers into seeing it as evidence of "political correctness" and attempts to curb free speech.

Schubiner added a better approach is to enlist people your child trusts.

"Really lean on relationships and relationships that the young person has with either older peers or other adults who share inclusive and equitable values," Schubiner recommended.

A grim reminder is out - that Arizona could be doing more to keep its youngest residents safe and healthy.

The state's 29th annual Child Fatality Report says a total of 863 Arizona children died last year - and almost half of those deaths were considered preventable.

They include fatalities from abuse and neglect, COVID-19, drowning, firearm injuries - as well as substance-related causes, and sudden unexpected infant deaths. And all increased last year compared to 2020.

Dr. Mary Rimsza - the medical director of the Child Fatality Review program of the Arizona Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and chair of the review team - said it's unusual to see such a substantial increase, but this tragic information is useful.

"Frankly," said Rimsza, "a major purpose of us doing this report is to identify preventable deaths and to make recommendations on how future deaths can be prevented. That is our mission."

The report says Arizona's child mortality rate increased 4.7% from 2020 to 2021, and it's higher among boys than among girls.

In 2021, 31 children's deaths were attributed to COVID-19, compared to 12 in 2020.

Another category with an alarming increase was drowning - the rate jumped 108%. And in substance-related deaths, poisoning was the leading factor.

Of the 49 child poisoning fatalities Rimsza said 46 were opiate overdoses, and fentanyl was responsible for 44 of them.

"The deaths due to fentanyl and other opiate overdoses, most all the opiate deaths in children were due to fentanyl," said Rimsza. "It is a huge problem in our state. It is a very tragic event - oftentimes, it could be the first time a young person tried a drug."

Rimsza added that the message to Arizona families is that there are many steps families can take to prevent a tragedy - from ensuring safe sleep environments for infants, to making sure pool areas are supervised and well fenced, to storing firearms safely and securely.

The report contains a full list of recommendations.