Mayor Rallies Child Welfare Professionals, Parents At 'Summit'
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Mayor Jim Kenney gave a pep talk, of sorts, Wednesday to parents and professionals who are trying to improve Philadelphia's child welfare system, at an event billed as a "Strengthening Families Summit."
The mayor applauded the Department of Human Services' efforts, but frequently went off-script to bash the Republican presidential candidate, Pennsylvania's former governor and the soda industry's effort to defeat a 1.5 cents per ounce sweetened beverage tax.
He confessed that DHS "keeps me up at night, not because we're not trying. It's because the work load is so big and its problems are so massive."
The Department has had a difficult two years that saw a steep rise in the number of children in care, which led to problems that resulted in the downgrading of its state license to provisional status.
The "summit" provided training and networking for a new approach that identifies strengths and resources families can use to stay intact, rather than focusing on problems that might cause children to be removed from a home.
"It has revolutionized our approach," says acting Commissioner Jessica Shapiro. "Instead of approaching a case from a negative perspective, like, 'what's going on here that's not working?' it's, 'what's going on here that is working and how can we help make your family stronger?'"
Kenney expressed confidence that the three key programs for which he sought the soda tax -- universal pre-K, community schools and revitalized parks, recreation centers and libraries -- would help by providing additional resources for families.
That led to a digression about the Beverage Association's $10.6-million effort to defeat the tax.
"We were up against big people. I mean they had lobbyists out the wazoo," Kenney said. "We had a mass of unpaid lobbyists... people who cared about our communities. And we beat them. It was really kind of cool beating them."
A spokesman for the Beverage Industry noted the mayor also had paid lobbyists: the coalition supporting the tax spent some $2.5 Million dollars, including money from Kenney's own campaign PAC.
In discussing the value of community schools, he made a detour into slavery and Irish repression.
"The violence we see in our neighborhoods is a direct result of the 26 percent poverty rate," Kenney said. "The poverty is a result of the lack of education. Period. I mean, you look back on our country's history, the plantation owners wouldn't let slaves learn to read because they knew what was going to happen: they were going to start acting for themselves. In Ireland, the British government tried to keep priests from teaching people to read and write. It's been a history in this world that we keep people down by keeping them ignorant."
Kenney then asserted that former governor Tom Corbett was following that agenda:
"I believe the Corbett administration had an absolute plan to defund public education, to turn it over to the private sector. And he got booted out."
Governor Corbett, reached for comment, denied Kenney's allegation.
"There was no intention to ever defund public schools in Philadelphia," he said. "Everyone's entitled to an opinion but his opinion is based on no facts whatsoever."
The audience seemed receptive, chuckling and applauding at times, including when Kenney suggested that the Khizr Khan, whose son was killed in Iraq and whose criticism of Donald Trump at the Democratic National Convention prompted a widely-condemned reaction from the candidate, would have a decisive role in determining the presidential election.
"I know this national election is just frightening in many, many ways," he said. "I sense in the end, a Muslim family who lost an army captain may be the people who save the country in the end."
