Not to mention, if you rat on your parents and get yanked into a group home, your experience is very likely the same or worse as it would be at home, and growing up, you know kids who this happened to and more or less have proof as to why you don't talk about it. I certainly saw this happen to people I knew, one of them lived with us for awhile and my folks arranged for her to live with a relative, which allowed them to really make it in life instead of being stuck in the system. Weirdly, after some initial trouble that looked impossible to overcome, it was very simple to get them placed into our home, and, very simple to get them in with a relative. Most of that was the workings of the social worker assigned to them, who was hard to reach out to, and very clearly over worked.
Basically, there has to be a better intervention than just taking people's children away, which certainly keys into your points.
I'd take it further to the point where, the poverty line is re-evaluated per locality, and inflation needs to be accurately reported, and with it the tax brackets as required by law. Then we need to dump the tax burden completely off the lowest earners, along with their requirement to file taxes at all. Then, we need to re-evaluate the bottom tiers to ramp in slowly to help eliminate welfare traps. It'd probably be a good idea, additionally, to no longer tax things like unemployment/workmen's comp/disability/social security/etc, for similar reasons. Reporting taxes itself is a burden all its own, and it negatively affects people who already struggle with math.
Also, something that isn't currently done, and certainly should be done, is to create interactions between the kids who have poor situations with the kids that have good situations. My elementary school had a 'buddy' program, where the older kids would hang out in a structured way with the younger kids. I think it'd go a long way in terms of support to have a system where kids from the good side of town interact with kids from the bad side of town in that way, and to make it a K-12 program. You additionally get the side product of the kids who have better situations being able to socialize with, and therefore have empathy for, kids in bad situations, and real empathy at that, not "spend some more tax money" empathy, actual boots on the ground empathy, person to person.
I had a lot of what you're talking about in your last paragraph in our Air Cadet program. I was exposed to a lot of different people, both adult volunteers and peers, from different walks of life. It had a really positive impact on my life.
Basically, there has to be a better intervention than just taking people's children away, which certainly keys into your points.
I'd take it further to the point where, the poverty line is re-evaluated per locality, and inflation needs to be accurately reported, and with it the tax brackets as required by law. Then we need to dump the tax burden completely off the lowest earners, along with their requirement to file taxes at all. Then, we need to re-evaluate the bottom tiers to ramp in slowly to help eliminate welfare traps. It'd probably be a good idea, additionally, to no longer tax things like unemployment/workmen's comp/disability/social security/etc, for similar reasons. Reporting taxes itself is a burden all its own, and it negatively affects people who already struggle with math.
Also, something that isn't currently done, and certainly should be done, is to create interactions between the kids who have poor situations with the kids that have good situations. My elementary school had a 'buddy' program, where the older kids would hang out in a structured way with the younger kids. I think it'd go a long way in terms of support to have a system where kids from the good side of town interact with kids from the bad side of town in that way, and to make it a K-12 program. You additionally get the side product of the kids who have better situations being able to socialize with, and therefore have empathy for, kids in bad situations, and real empathy at that, not "spend some more tax money" empathy, actual boots on the ground empathy, person to person.