January 29, 2015
Letter to the Editor of the Baltimore Sun, May 20, 2014
I read with some interest Paul Marx’s commentary about the anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education (“60 years after ‘Brown,’ mixed results,” May 16). I concur wholeheartedly with Mr. Marx’s assessment that the Brown decision was a hallmark for equity in our country and that cities need better schools if they are to retain residents. His remaining conclusions deserve a second look.
The intent of the Brown decision was to ensure that every child gets a quality education regardless of the color of his or her skin. The writer’s suggestion that disparity still exists because “disadvantaged black youth brought the effects of their deprived childhoods into white middle class schools and had the aggregate results of bringing down the quality” is nonsense.
That there is disparity based on race in our country — in education and many other arenas — is clear. It has far more to do with the fact that opportunity is, too often, available or elusive based on skin color and ZIP code. For too many children, the absence of opportunities to be healthy, safe and thrive has enormous consequences in all facets of their lives, including school performance. To lay the blame for inadequate schools at the feet of disadvantaged children is, well, a little like blaming the canary for expiring in a gas-filled mine.
Molly McGrath Tierney, Baltimore
In the Baltimore Sun 2014
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/bs-ed-children-letter-20140718-story.html
Children Should Be Welcomed
Over the past several months, the matter of children fleeing violence in their Central American countries for safety in ours has entered into our national conversation (“Carroll’s revealing ‘illeagle’ graffiti,” July 15). It arrives from the pens of experts, from elected officials, from the pulpit and it has a seat at our dining room tables. Among the challenges we face as listeners is untangling the information we are receiving.
First, the matter of caring for these children has been combined with an important discussion on immigration policy. There are important ways in which these are two very separate topics. Believing they are one-and-the-same keeps us from responding to each in an appropriate time frame. Creating an immigration policy that works will require careful planning, consideration of a great many perspectives and time. The matter of children from across the border who are already here has an urgency to it that will not withstand that pace. They need us right now.
Second, we have all been taught a technical term — unaccompanied minors — that helps us forget that the people of whom we speak are children. Children who are seeking refuge from awful circumstances. They are hungry and tired and afraid. They need food without worry about where there next meal is coming from. They need sleep without fear that violence will interrupt their repose. They need safety and help finding their families so that they can begin to heal. Speaking of them only in a technical term protects us from having to admit the reality these children are facing and our moral obligation to respond.
We are fortunate in Maryland that the leadership at Catholic Charities is clear on both of these points (“Catholic Charities seeks to house immigrant children in Baltimore County,”July 17). They stand out among organizations across the country because of their courageous response to this crisis. Despite the threat of political ill will, hate crimes and protesters, they are living their value system by moving quickly to open their doors and their hearts to some of these children. I hope their actions will be a beacon to others who can also join the effort and exemplify the spirit on which our country was built. And to the 50 children who may come here, we can join Bill McCarthy and his colleagues by welcoming them to Baltimore.
Molly McGrath Tierney
The writer is the former director of the Baltimore City Department of Social Services.
Comcast Newsmakers, 2011
Comcast Newsmakers, 2011
February 2013
It is no secret that our caseload is changing. It’s getting smaller and it’s also getting older. More than 40% of children in foster care in Baltimore City aren’t actually children at all. They’re adults ages 18 to 21.
There are some important things to know about these young adults. They did not arrive yesterday. Many of them came into foster care as young children and have spent their entire life here. Some, never in a family. Now in their teen years, they are testing out their independence. This testing is developmentally appropriate and incredibly hard to be around. It is sometimes rude, and frustrating, and loud and just plain difficult – just like in regular families.
I am sensitive to how challenging it can be to work with youth who are “testing”. Recently I have begun to hear proposals and references to the use of Tough Love with young adults in foster care. I thought a review of that reference might be helpful to us all.
From Wikipedia:
Tough love is an expression used when someone treats another person harshly or sternly with the intent to help them in the long run. The phrase was evidently coined by Bill Milliken when he wrote the book Tough Love in 1968 and has been used by numerous authors since then.
In most uses, there must be some actual love or feeling of affection behind the harsh or stern treatment to be defined as tough love. For example, genuinely concerned parents refusing to support their drug–addicted child financially until he or she enters drug rehabilitation would be said to be practicing tough love. Athletic coaches who maintain strict rules and highly demanding training regimens, but who care about their players, could also be said to be practicing tough love.
I read between the lines to understand that Tough Love can work — but not if it’s the first kind of love a youth experiences. Tough Love, in order to be successful, has to be preceded by Real Love. The only reason Tough Love would get someone’s attention is when they understood it as a very difficult, heart wrenching act designed to ensure their well being. Tough Love used out of frustration or irritation will have the opposite of the desired effect.
To be clear: Real Love is not the opposite of Tough Love. Real Love is not a push over. It does not yield at every demand or cower at every request. It is, as I recall, patient and kind. It invests in someone’s success and conveys care and concern at every opportunity. It helps someone learn to think for themselves, make good decisions on their own behalf, and become all that they can be. Real Love comes first. Real love begets Real Love.
It seems to me our young adults have been under-served in the Real Love department. It may well be the case that some of our youth need Tough Love. I propose we earn the right to use it.
June 2013
What does help really look like in a service environment? There are two places to look: the servant and the recipient. Traditionally, the servant’s role is to help the recipient How can we tell the difference between something that helps the recipient and something that protects the role of the servant?
Beware social service programs that blame their performance on their intended recipients. For instance: GED programs report the cause of their 40% success rate on the students who drop out or don’t attend. I suppose one option is that there is something wrong with the people. An alternative option that deserves exploration is that there is something wrong with the program.
This conclusion offers a nuanced view of programs. Programs actually have two purposes: help the recipient and protect the role of the servant.
Servants are good hearted people who are considered selfless in their choices to build a career or pattern of volunteer work off of helping. These good hearted people design or select roles for themselves because the honestly intend to be helpful. The way they identify who needs help is through a sense of feeling sorry for a particular population. Abused children, drug addicts, the homeless, poor people…. They take this sincere feeling and build programs around it designed to help. They keep programs going by returning to their sense of feeling sorry for people. They want to help and the way the know they are being helpful is this persistent sense of feeling sorry for people. If I maintain this feeling then I can easily identify those who need help and keep helping.
The challenge is that I don’t think you can have both. I don’t think you can maintain the sense of feeling sorry for someone and also help them. I think many servants are actually leveraging their helping activities in order to maintain their sense of feeling sorry for people.
If what I want to do is help, and I do it by maintaining my sense of feeling sorry for poor people, then I — either consciously or sub-consciously — make decisions that ensure my programs or services sound like very good ideas but in implementation miss important details. They miss the very details that ensure the poor person will fall short of success — and I? I will get that familiar feeling that affirms my existence. I will feel sorry for them. And I will keep trying to help.
Over-rides my interest in actually helping someone.
Its difficult then to tell the difference between things that actually help and things that serve my interest in “helping”.
Until I seek something else — say, liberation for another person — I will keep “helping”. Lucky for me, that will ensure plenty of people for whom I can feel sorry. Liberate them from whom? Why, from me, of course.
Testimony to the Maryland General Assembly
February 8, 2011
My name is Molly McGrath Tierney. I am here in support of SB 116.
In the spirit of disclosure, I am a state employee and the Director of the Baltimore City Department of Social Services. I come to you today as a private citizen, and bring a graduate degree in child development and more than 20 years experience in the field of social services to families.
I think that’s what today’s discussion is about: family. Marriage is just a way to define family.
In the history of social services in our country there is precedence for limiting the definition of family. For instance, in the early moments of our country we found Native American parents unfit and packed their children onto eastbound trains. In the early part of the last century in many places there were significant consequences for inter-racial marriage. And 50 years ago, federal policy was enacted that rendered low income women who lived with the father of their children ineligible for food stamps. I believe that the decision-makers in those moments were acting in good faith — doing what they thought was best for other people’s families. Hindsight tells us, without a doubt, that the impact of their choices was catastrophic. A culture was all but destroyed, people who loved one another were separated, and families in vibrant and important communities were systematically dismantled.
Over twenty years of work with vulnerable families in three different cities has taught me this: the only definition of family that matters is the subjective one — the one each of us finds for ourselves in our own hearts. Now, families come in all shapes and sizes: grandparents and grandchildren, loving couples of different races and nationalities, multi-lingual families, gay families, adoptive families….. People are capable of weaving together their own definition of family — some by blood and roots, and others by water and branches. And in the end, who you believe is your family is your family. It is the most basic social unit — and even in modern times it upholds the very fabric of the country. It makes each of us stronger, more resilient, more productive and better at being human. To limit the definition of family in any way is to act at our own peril. To limit anyone is to limit everyone.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I am gay. Last year, for the first time in my life I was legally married. Nothing bad has happened to anyone as a result. Only good things have come to me and through me.
I understand how challenging it is to lead social change. I commend each of you for the courage and tenacity it will take to keep Maryland in the forefront.
