One of the more pernicious things about social work's relationship to policing and perpetuation of racism is the way its workforce is largely comprised of young white women who genuinely want to do good but have no systemic analysis of their/our own relationship to power.

The very real desire to do good makes is hard to talk to people about the harmful effects of the systems they are upholding - like the broken child welfare system.

"But I'm doing this for the good of the child/the family!" is very hard to argue with if the person you're speaking to doesn't realize their ideas of good are marinated in their white, middle class cultural norms which often do not match those of the families they regulate.

The social work programme I graduated from tried to address this through a constant referencing of the Sixties Scoop (very important!), but then sent (overwhelmingly white) students out into placements that regularly enact those same policies onto families and individuals today.

With no push for critical reflection on what happened in those placements from the programme itself, it set up a lot of young do-gooders to become cogs in the same racist state regulation of families that includes the police and the prison.