NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending December 9, 2025

● I’m not sure how to talk about this first item without sounding all clickbaity, but what happened in a New York appellate court late last week really did play out almost like the climactic scene in a Hollywood movie. It was oral argument in the latest in a string of cases concerning the New York City family police agency harassing survivors of domestic violence and their children.  Fortunately, it’s all on video. I have a blog post about the case, with a link to the video.

● New York State’s highest court is sending a similar message. I’ve often written that, in much of the country, families would get about as much “representation” from a cardboard cut-out in a three-piece suit as they get from the overloaded court-appointed lawyers who may meet them for the first time five minutes before the court hearing. That can happen even when it’s a hearing to terminate children’s rights to their parents (a more accurate description of the stakes than “termination of parental rights”). The Imprint reports on a case in which the New York State Court of Appeals said that’s not good enough. 

Perhaps most notably, when a lawyer defending the termination tried to play the bonding card, the court didn’t buy it. From the story: 

“There is no question that it is very important and imperative that these cases be resolved in a speedy fashion,” [Judge] Troutman said during the appeal proceedings. “But we cannot throw the Constitution in the garbage with respect to people’s rights in order to get there.” 

● One hopes the message all these judges are sending will reach all across the nation, or at least across New York, including to Rochester, where, writing in the Rochester Beacon, a mother describes what happened when she fought for a better education for her son, and the school retaliated by calling the family police agency: 

As a Black parent, I do not feel safe asking for the support I need. I fear I will be met with accusations and racialized surveillance. For Jeremiah, he becomes very anxious when asked personal questions—especially from those in authority positions. He fears threats of being removed from his environment. The reality is, we were both traumatized by our interactions with CPS. 

● Study after study keeps showing that, in typical cases, children left in their own homes fare better even than children alleged to be comparably maltreated but placed in foster care.  Most recently, there was that Swedish study showing that, by age 20, the foster children were more than four times more likely to have died. But there’s an even more fundamental question: Why have we allowed foster-care apologists to reverse the burden of proof? My column in The Imprint: Safer Compared to What? Foster care apologists set an incredibly low bar — and still can’t clear it 

● Remember the expose of horrible conditions in residential treatment in Arizona and Kentucky and Tennessee and Indiana and Utah and Iowa and Oklahoma and Rhode Island and Washington State and Arkansas and New York and Connecticut, and Idaho? 

Now, thanks to excellent reporting from The Marshall Project – Cleveland, add Ohio. In the follow-up story, in which various officials shoveling children into the institution tell us how shocked – shocked! -- they are, a spokesperson for metropolitan Cleveland says that now, after all the abuse has been exposed, and they need to find someplace to put all those children, “reunification also is a priority.”

In this week’s edition of The Horror Stories go in All Directions:

In 2003, Dewey Sloan, then the chief juvenile prosecutor in an Iowa county where Native American children were in foster care at a rate seven times higher than the rate for white children told the Des Moines Register, "I don't think there's anything in any of these cases that points to something positive about Indian culture, except the culture of drugs and the culture of poverty and the culture of abuse." 

Five years later, the Iowa Capital Dispatch reports, Sloan’s office got a judge to terminate the rights of a family of Native American children to live with their mother. Here’s what happened next, according to a lawsuit filed by one of the children, now an adult: 

In 2009, when [Mikalla Starr] Winkel was 4 years old, she and two of her siblings were placed in the foster home of Norman and Cammie Winkel of Sioux City – a couple who had no connection to the Santee Sioux Nation or any other Native American community. 

According to the lawsuit, at the time of the foster-home placement Norman Winkel was a former prison inmate who “had an extensive drug-related criminal history with five drug convictions, including a felony for which he received a 25-year prison sentence.” 

In 2010, Winkel was legally adopted by the couple. The lawsuit alleges that while Mikalla lived in the home, Norman Winkel “began to exhibit grooming behaviors toward Mikalla,” and then, as she matured, the “grooming escalated to sexual assault, including fondling, mutual touching, and sexual assault in the foster home.” The alleged sexual abuse “continued for multiple years,” according to the lawsuit.

NCCPR in The Imprint: Safer Compared to What? Foster care apologists set an incredibly low bar — and still can’t clear it

 A recent study in Sweden followed children in more than 21,000 cases of child abuse or neglect allegations. Part of the sample went to foster care, the others were allowed to stay in their homes. 

It found that though the two groups were no worse off to begin with, by age 20, the foster children were more than four times more likely to have died than the children allowed to stay with their families. We’re not talking about a small difference: the study finds that if a child facing the prospect of being taken into care is indeed removed from their home, the risk of dying by the year they turn 20 increases from 1.8% to 8.6%. ...

Read the full column in The Imprint

Child welfare in New York: “Despicable” them.

That’s just one of the choice words appellate court justices applied to the behavior of the New York City family police agency during oral argument last week.

Imagine being 11 years old. You’ve moved with your brother and your mother to a new state to start a new life in a new school. Suddenly, armed sheriff’s deputies are marching through the halls, calling out your name. When they find you, all your new friends can see as they bring you to a semi-public place to interrogate you.  

Now imagine it’s Christmas morning. You’re at home celebrating, family are visiting. Suddenly the armed sheriff’s deputies are back, pounding on the door, loudly calling out that they’re there because there’s a child welfare agency case against your mother.  They demand entry, “observe” you and your brother and search the entire apartment, all in front of the guests. 

Of course, it’s all ok because a “child welfare” agency would only do this when parents are accused of beating or raping children, right?  Well, OK, maybe they’d also do it if parents were accused of starving children, or running a drug lab in a basement, right?  But they’d never, ever inflict so much trauma on children whose parents were accused of doing nothing to them at all – would they? 

Of course they would. It’s the sort of thing that happens all the time. But last week, in a scene that played out like the climax of a courtroom drama, one mid-level appellate court judge pledged that, at last, in one state, in at least one type of case, it will no longer be tolerated. She called the behavior of the agency in question, New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS), “despicable.”  

Said Presiding Justice Sallie Manzanet-Daniels: 

The issue here is that this woman has done nothing wrong, but she's being treated like a criminal, and her children are being retraumatized again and again. That's the issue here, and that's going to be put to a stop! 

You can see it all in the video above of oral argument in the case, known as Matter of Liam M. The argument starts at 2:22:22 in.  If you follow this link  it goes a little past that, to 2:38:00. That's the point where, at long last, an agency which normally is accountable to no one, finally is held to account for what it has done to so many children. 

Lawyers sometimes refer to judges who ask a lot of questions as a “hot bench.” This one was on fire. That requires some explanation. 

The context 

More than 20 years ago, a federal court barred ACS from tearing apart families and throwing children into foster care just because a parent, usually the mother, was herself a survivor of domestic violence. New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, effectively extended that statewide. (NCCPR’s Vice President, Carolyn Kubitschek, was co-counsel for the plaintiffs in that landmark case, which has been cited scores of times across the country in the intervening years.) 

Of course this didn’t stop the practice completely, but it curbed it. But the response from ACS could be summed up as: Oh yeah? Maybe we can’t take the kids, but we can still harass families with endless supervision and surveillance as much as we want! 

Two recent appellate court decisions stopped ACS from doing this at an early stage in the process. To which ACS effectively responded: Oh yeah? Maybe you can stop us early on, but we can still harass families with endless supervision and surveillance at later stages in the case! 

That brings us to the case argued last week. 

The facts of the case 

What might prompt such questioning from the justices? 

Here’s the backstory, as recounted in the brief for the mother, known as Ms. C., submitted by the Family Justice Law Center and the New York University School of Law (quotes in blue) and in oral argument, mostly from the Legal Aid Society, which represented not the mother, but the children (quotes in green). (And, lest there still be any question who really is on the side of protecting children here, they were supported, through amicus briefs, by, among others, Children’s Rights, Lawyers for Children, who do what the name implies, and the National Association of Counsel for Children.) 

The family is from Florida. They moved to New York to be close to the children’s grandmother, who was suffering from cancer. They moved to a New York home that the mother owned with her ex-husband. On one occasion, the ex got violent with her in front of the children. The mother did everything right, immediately calling the police and then getting all the court orders she needed to kick the father out of the house and keep him out. He followed those orders to the letter. 

The father consented to a finding of neglect against him. The mother was never charged with anything, and, indeed, ACS records repeatedly attest to the fact that she took excellent care of the children.  Eventually, she and the children moved back to Florida. So any supposed “threat” from the father was now 1,300 miles away. 

But through it all, ACS repeatedly demanded that the mother and the children be under their surveillance and control, and the Family Court repeatedly rubber-stamped those requests. The only grounds ever given for this surveillance: the father had not yet jumped through all the hoops in his case plan. 

Here’s what this did to the family: 

ACS monitored Ms. C.’s care of her children for more than five months, conducting numerous announced and unannounced searches of her home, from which the respondent father remained judicially barred. Caseworkers searched every room in the apartment during every home search. They even repeatedly inspected inside the refrigerator. 

I keep wondering: Did ACS think the father was hiding in the fridge?  

When ACS said, “Jump!” the family immediately had to say, “How high?” If they weren’t home when the caseworker was at the door, they had to drop everything and race back there – even when they were visiting their grandmother, sick with cancer. 

When the family moved back to Florida, things actually got worse. ACS went high-tech, demanding the right to virtually enter the home at any time and surveil every room (and, yes, the refrigerator again) by video. But that wasn’t enough for them. They recruited armed Florida sheriffs to inspect the family in person, and not just at home. As the children’s lawyer told the court, and the brief explains, one of the children 

was at school with her new schoolmates, and these unformed people with guns come, like, running into the school, calling out her name and saying they're there on behalf of ACS. They take her out of class. They interview her in a quasi-public space. Kids she wanted to be friends with saw. 

She began “shaking and crying with embarrassment and rage” and “yelling at the sheriffs to leave her alone.” 

She was so humiliated and mortified, her mother had to come to school to take her off campus. She couldn't even calm down. She was so upset. 

And after that, it was hard for her to even come back to school. But when she did come back … she started having problems that she had never had before. She started having behavioral problems. She started getting in fights. … 

She's finally doing better now, but it took a while. It took a really long time. 

And then, two months later, this happened: 

On Christmas morning, ACS sent armed sheriffs to Ms. C.’s apartment. In public outside the apartment building, the sheriffs loudly announced that they were there because of a children’s services case against Ms. C. and demanded to see her children. The sheriffs observed Liam and Sari and searched the apartment. Ms. C. had family over for the holiday and testified that the law enforcement search was “humiliating.”… 

Ms. C. felt “constantly threatened” that she would lose her children if she did not comply, a possibility that kept her awake at night. As she explained, “I [felt] like I left one abuser for another. …  ACS use[d] methods of control, including sending sheriffs to my apartment, to remind me that they’re in charge.” 

[The children] felt “watched and controlled” by ACS, and were “embarrassed and frightened” by sheriffs demanding to see them at school and at home … They implored the caseworker directly: “we don’t want to talk to you, don’t call us.” 

Even a family court judge overseeing the case said: 

“[I]t bothers me that ACS reached out to the Florida law enforcement authorities that put [Ms. C.] and her children through . . . these embarrassing ordeals.” 

But the judge let ACS keep on doing it anyway. 

Now, however, some appellate justices are making clear they’re not going to tolerate such “despicable” behavior.

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending December 2, 2025

● Another example of the journalism of child welfare at its best: From CT Mirror:  A project that involved reporting over two years, revealing how the “child welfare” system fails on so many levels and leaves so much heartbreak in its wake. We’re pleased to have NCCPR’s perspective included.

● Having exposed the terrible harm done to children when they are torn from their parents because those families lack adequate housing (and how it’s clear the leadership in the family police agency in Missouri is just fine with that), The Nation turns now to places that are doing better: three counties in Wisconsin.

The story also cuts through the hype about the so-called Family First Act, pointing out that, particularly when it comes to providing families with the concrete help they really need, “Families First Act funding comes with so many strings attached it’s nearly impossible to use.”

● What’s the difference between “Driving While Black” and “Driving While a White Prominent Lobbyist and Former Campaign Policy Advisor to the Governor”? Based on a thoroughly reported story from The Imprint, I have a blog post that answers that question. 

● Yes, again: Another lawsuit against child abuse pediatricians. This time, the IndyStar reports on a case from Indiana. 

● While in Georgia, WXIA-TV reports on child abuse pediatricians resisting reform. 

● And in Psychology Today, a pediatrician with decades of experience reviewing suspected child abuse cases says she has observed 

a troubling pattern: many allegations arise not from actual abuse or neglect, but from misinterpreted childhood injuries or medical conditions. When these events are viewed through socioeconomic bias, parents can experience intense stress, fear, and trauma while navigating everyday challenges and worrying that ordinary accidents might be mistaken for abuse or neglect. 

● In The Imprint, Jessica Castillo writes this about her experience in foster care: 

I was placed in foster care right after turning 12. I was in five foster homes, adopted at 16, and kicked out at 17, resulting in a brief period of homelessness. During my time in foster care, I experienced abuse in all of my placements, the third being the worst. … I remember her telling me and my foster sisters, “You think your social workers will believe you? I’ve been a foster parent for over 20 years, and I’m very good friends with the supervisors at DCFS. If you have a problem with me, they’ll just move you somewhere else, and good riddance.” …  There wasn’t a single day in foster care where I felt peace and safety.

● Massachusetts has a committee to nominate candidates to be the state’s next “Child Advocate.” I’ve posted my statement to the committee, which discusses not only the criteria for the person who should get the job but also the urgent need to restructure the entire office. (And it applies to almost every such office in the country.) 

● There’s still another study out documenting the transformative power of cash in reducing child abuse and neglect, this time from Flint, Michigan. 

● And finally, here’s something I never thought I’d write: Check out the op-ed from the Trump Administration’s highest-ranking child welfare official – in The Daily Signal.  And see also this research report from the America First Policy Institute.  (No, I don’t agree with all of either of these, but a lot seems headed in the right direction.)

Child welfare in Georgia: What’s the difference between “Driving While Black” and “Driving While a White Prominent Lobbyist and Former Campaign Policy Advisor to the Governor”?

Quite a lot, if you happen to be the children in the car 

Perhaps you remember the story of the five children in Tennessee, torn from their parents and thrown into foster care because the parents were caught Driving While Black. 

Their car was pulled over for driving with “dark tint and traveling in the left lane while not actively passing.” Then, a police officer found five grams of marijuana in the car, a misdemeanor in Tennessee. 

It was reason enough for someone to call the Tennessee family police. They took away the children, “ages 7, 5, 3, 2 and a nursing four-month-old baby.” They were split among three foster homes before ultimately being placied with a family friend. It was nearly two months before the family was reunited. 

Let us now compare this case to one that just turned up in Georgia. In that case, if police allegations are correct, the offenses are quite different, but so is the complexion, and the political status of the driver. As this impressively thorough story in The Imprint reports: 

Jason Broce was arrested Oct. 16 north of Atlanta on six misdemeanor charges after allegedly getting into an accident with another vehicle and fleeing the scene in his F-150 truck. The charges included driving under the influence, hit and run, and two counts of child endangerment, according to a police report obtained by The Imprint. 

The child endangerment charges stem from the fact that Broce’s two children, ages 8 and 5, were in the car with him. (“Hit and run” apparently refers to hitting the car and fleeing the scene, there is no charge that Broce hit a person.) 

But Jason’s children did not spend so much as a minute in foster care. And, to be clear, that is as it should be. 

As far as we know, Jason wasn’t even ordered to stay out of the house while the case is investigated – if there is an investigation. Again, as it should be. 

Jason, as you’ve almost certainly figured out, is white. He’s also a prominent lobbyist and former campaign policy advisor to the governor. 

And what about his wife? After all, might there be “failure to protect” issues here? The Imprint story cites “Amber Walden, a Georgia attorney who specializes in child welfare cases. … 

Walden said the child welfare agency and judges often question the other parent about where they were at the time of the incident, what they knew, and why they allowed an intoxicated parent to drive with the kids. 

“It would have been like, ‘Where was the mother?’” she said. “Somebody would have had to give a really good reason as to why this happened. Judges and [the state child welfare agency] are just known for saying out of an abundance of caution, ‘We’re going to keep this case open.’” 

Again, no indication any of this happened – again, as it should be. There is no reason to harass a non-offending parent and add stress for the entire family.  So it’s a good thing they didn’t do it -in this case. 

In fact, there is no indication the police ever even called the child welfare agency. Again, from the story:

It remains unclear whether the state child welfare agency is investigating the Jason Broce incident. Law enforcement personnel are mandated reporters of suspected child abuse and neglect under state law. But Crystal Zion, a spokesperson for the arresting agency, the Georgia State Patrol, said in an email that the responding officer did not “directly” notify CPS on the scene. 

Instead, it seems someone simply called Broce’s wife and “a sergeant waited for her to arrive at the arrest scene, where she picked up her children and the truck.” 

Oh, wait. Perhaps that’s what the Georgia State Patrol spokesperson means by not calling CPS directly.  Because Broce’s wife is Candice Broce, who is both commissioner of Georgia’s Department of Human Services and director of its Division of Family and Children Services. That's the agency that's been cutting services to keep families together and dealing with a scandal over a child abuse pediatrician, and a the scandal over  false positive drug tests. 

Again, the light touch response here is correct. The odds that the children would be harmed by foster care are vastly greater than the odds that Jason is going to go out driving with the children again when, it is alleged, he’s had too much to drink or that his wife won’t be watching closely whenever he has the car keys – assuming he keeps his license. (The right punishment for Jason, if guilty, is dependent on much we don’t know, including whether this would be a first offense.) 

If only that same standard were applied to all the poor and nonwhite families who are stopped by police for the same reason, or for far, far less. 

At a minimum, I hope the experience might prompt Candice Broce to do some serious thinking about how her agency deals with issues of alleged drug or alcohol abuse by parents. 

It reminds me of that case involving the “druggie mom” who used to live in my neighborhood -- The one who was addicted to prescription opioids, and was an alcoholic and had mental illness issues, but who never faced so much as a knock at the door from child protective services.  That’s because this “druggie mom” – Betty Ford -- had the money to get help and to be sure her drug use didn’t hurt her children. 

So just as I’ve suggested we apply the Betty Ford standard to drug use by parents, let’s also apply what seems to be the Candice Broce standard to any so-called “failure to protect” case.

Who watches the watchdog? (In Massachusetts and every other "child advocate" / "child welfare ombudsman" office.)

 The Massachusetts Legislature has named a nominating committee to recommend candidates to become the next leader of the state’s Office of Child Advocate.  I have written often about the failings of the current Child Advocate. Given who is on the committee, and how badly they organized a recent "listening session” I’m not optimistic that they will make a wise choice. 

Nevertheless, I sent them the written statement below. The recommendations concerning how the office should operate and how to restructure its governance apply not only in Massachusetts but also to most if not all similar offices.

_________

Thank you for the opportunity to submit this written statement.  I will conclude it with an introduction to my organization and our long history following child welfare in Massachusetts. 

But I want to start with the heart of the matter: what I hope you will look for in the next Child Advocate.  To do that, I want to start more than 3,700 miles from Massachusetts – in Sweden. 

That was the scene of the latest, and perhaps most horrifying, in a long line of studies documenting the enormous inherent harm of tearing children from their families, and the need to take this action far less often than Massachusetts does it today. 

The Swedish study looked at more than 20,000 cases. Conducted by a scholar based both in Sweden and at MIT, and using a methodology pioneered by another MIT scholar, the study compared the fate of children placed in foster care to that of children alleged to be comparably maltreated, but left in their own homes. Please note the part about comparably-maltreated. The foster youth did not have worse problems; they did not suffer worse alleged maltreatment. 

And yet, by age 20, those placed in foster care were more than four times more likely to have died.  Let me repeat that: More than four times more likely to be dead. The most common cause: suicide. 

One might argue, I suppose, that somehow the Swedish foster care system is vastly worse than the one in Massachusetts. But it would be hard to make that argument with a straight face. 

The findings from the Swedish study come on top of all those other studies, one after another after another, documenting worse outcomes for foster youth than for allegedly comparably-maltreated children left in their own homes. 

That’s not because foster parents are evil; most want to do the very best for the children in their care. Even group homes and institutions often are staffed by well-meaning people. Rather, it’s a testament to the inherent harm of family separation. Think back to the children torn from their parents at the Mexican border. Listen to their cries in this audio. Yes, there is a difference: caseworkers for the Department of Children and Families almost always mean well. But the children cry out the same way for the same reason.

 None of this means that no child ever should be taken from her or his parents. But it does mean that foster care needs to be used sparingly and in small doses.  But for decades, Massachusetts has prescribed mega-doses of foster care. As of 2024, Massachusetts was tearing apart families at a rate more than 40% above the national average – even when rates of child poverty are factored in. 

All this means that Massachusetts needs a Child Advocate who understands this, a child advocate who understands that in child welfare, the errors, including the worst errors, go in all directions, a child advocate who understands the need to call out, and learn from, the errors in all directions. 

Perhaps the only thing about Massachusetts child welfare about which everyone agrees is that caseworkers are overwhelmed and underprepared, rushing from case to case.  Under those circumstances, it should be obvious that there will be terrible mistakes in all directions. An office that finds errors only one way, concluding that workers constantly leave children in dangerous homes and never take children needlessly – or vice versa – probably has a structural problem and definitely needs better leadership. 

Yet for the current Child Advocate, the errors go only one way. Her reports follow the same pattern: Find the worst horror story, draw sweeping conclusions from that single case, and press for measures bound to lead to taking away more children. That approach only further overloads the system, doing enormous harm to children needlessly taken, while leaving workers with less time to find the relatively few children in real danger - making the next horrible tragedy more likely.  An advocate who sees error in only one direction encourages a system that makes all children less safe. 

The one time the current advocate accidentally faced real accountability was revealing. She led a commission on mandatory child abuse reporting laws. For more than a year, that commission heard only what the child advocate wanted it to hear – so its initial draft called for further expanding mandatory reporting. 

But then, when OCA had to hold a public hearing, a bit like this one, the commission heard from all sides. They heard the evidence that mandatory reporting has backfired, increasing the danger to children. Commissioners were, in their own words, “shocked,” “surprised” and “taken aback.” 

The commission rebelled. It chose to make no recommendations at all. 

The other key reason to change OCA’s approach is the simple fact that the current advocate’s approach hasn’t improved anything.  The current Massachusetts Child Advocate has been in office for ten years. In that time, she’s produced a ton of sensational headlines. But there is no evidence that any of it actually has made Massachusetts children safer. 

            Massachusetts children need an advocate who will demand accountability, and demand that we learn the right lessons both when children are left in dangerous homes and when children are torn from everyone loving and familiar and consigned to the chaos of foster care. 

            A child advocate who understands that the errors go in all directions would commit to a key method for discovering errors in all directions: an annual audit of a random sample of cases to assess system performance and make recommendations. 

The audits should be conducted by a diverse team of stakeholders — former family defense attorneys and former child abuse prosecutors, for example. At my organization’s suggestion, New Jersey’s first child advocate, Kevin Ryan, pioneered a similar approach 19 years ago, producing a report that found — no surprise — errors in all directions.  

Restructuring the office 

            Though it is beyond the mandate of this committee, I want to urge it to recommend not only a new child advocate but a new structure for OCA. 

            We all know the cliché: Knowledge is power. The corollary, though, is that anyone who has a near-monopoly on knowledge will have enormous power to shape public opinion. That enormous power brings enormous potential for abuse. 

Agencies like DCF tend to be more secret than the CIA. So whoever becomes a state’s “child advocate” has that enormous power. But while such offices are conceived as a way to watch over state child welfare agencies, lawmakers sometimes forget a crucial question: Who watches the watchdog? 

So a new child advocate isn’t enough. I hope you will urge lawmakers to restructure the office. 

Right now, as you know, three public officials name the child advocate. S/he serves a fixed five-year term. While the advocate demands accountability from everyone else, s/he is accountable to – no one. No one can set her priorities, no one can remove her except for cause, no one can fact-check her, no one can serve as a check and balance against any biases s/he may bring to the job. 

Many who spoke at this committee’s “listening session” spoke of the need for the child advocate to be independent. He or she already is entirely independent – independent to a fault. Because while it is reasonable, indeed essential. that OCA as an office be insulated from political interference, someone still needs to watch the watchdog.  Here’s how it could be done: 

OCA should be governed by a board of directors that is diverse in terms of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and disability; vital for a state with a child welfare system where Black, Native American and Hispanic children are grossly overrepresented. It also must be diverse in terms of lived experience and viewpoints. The board should include current and/or former foster youth, foster parents, kinship foster parents, birth parents who lost children to the system, current or former frontline caseworkers, representatives of the disability and LGBTQ communities, child abuse prosecutors and family defense attorneys. 

But it can’t stop there. Mental health and domestic violence are constantly cited as reasons for child welfare intervention. So the board would need mental health practitioners, people who work with survivors of domestic violence, and survivors themselves.  In addition, in Massachusetts, as in most states, the system focuses almost exclusively on poor people, often confusing poverty with neglect. So the board should have leaders of anti-poverty organizations. 

Then, after what would, no doubt, be vigorous debate, this group should choose the Child Advocate. The board would also set the office’s priorities, determine its approach and review all reports before publication. 

This way, OCA as an office remains fully independent, but the leader of that agency is subjected to internal checks and balances to increase the likelihood that recommendations will be wise and unbiased. 

Because independent does not equal unbiased. I was surprised to hear one speaker equate the two during the listening session. 

We all have biases. And in a field as fraught as child welfare, the biases can run deep. Whoever is named the next child advocate almost certainly will have a background in the field. The personal experiences one encounters in any part of this field can be searing. And while any honorable leader seeks to check and control her or his biases, that is not enough. They need the guidance of others, in this case, a board whose diversity of personal experience allows for a check and balance against the biases, however unintended, of any one individual. 

The problem of bias would be even worse if, as seemed to be suggested by one speaker, the child advocate were allowed to become a virtual dictator, whose every recommendation would have to take effect. This would be an abdication of responsibility by the state’s elected representatives. They are ultimately responsible for determining policy and practice in child welfare, and every other field subject to governance by the commonwealth, on behalf of those they represent.

            This committee, of course, does not have the power to make the changes I recommend here. That, too, would rest with the elected representatives of the people. But it does have the power to recommend a restructuring. And it certainly has the power to recommend a child advocate who understands that the errors go in all directions. 

            Thank you.

About NCCPR 

The National Coalition for Child Protection Reform is a small nonprofit child advocacy organization dedicated to trying to make the child protection system better serve America’s most vulnerable children. We are a Virginia-based organization with Massachusetts roots. 

 The group was established at a 1991 Harvard Law School conference by the late Betty Vorenberg, a former member of the National Board of the ACLU, former Deputy Director of the Department of Public Welfare during the Dukakis Administration and former Deputy Director of the Massachusetts Advocacy Center. 

You can read all about our distinguished Board of Directors here https://nccpr.org/nccpr-board-and-staff/ and about what others in the field say about us here: https://nccpr.org/what-others-say-about-nccpr/   My own background is in journalism: 19 years as a practitioner, including two at WGBY Public Television in Springfield, three as a professor.  I spent much of my time covering child welfare, work that culminated in publication of a well-received book, Wounded Innocents (Prometheus Books, 1990, 1995). 

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending Nov. 23, 2025

Publishing early this week because, let’s face it, by Wednesday, who’s going to be around?

 Two stories this week illustrate the hypocrisy that permeates family policing.

● The New Jersey Monitor reports that the state Supreme Court ruled that prosecutors cannot simply assume that if a child dies of otherwise unexplained head trauma with a particular set of symptoms, it’s so-called “Shaken Baby Syndrome” and then claim it proves the child died of abuse. The widely-questioned “syndrome” (so widely-questioned that proponents slapped a new name onto it: “abusive head trauma”) has been abused by some doctors and family police agencies, who rush to blame abuse and rule out any other explanation. From the story: 

Justice Fabiana Pierre-Louis, in a lengthy majority decision that five other justices joined, said the syndrome has not been generally accepted in the biomechanical community, making expert testimony about it unreliable and inadmissible in court. … “Regardless of the severity or viciousness of a crime … Thursday’s decision affirms lower court rulings that had declared shaken baby syndrome “junk science.” 

● But are there also times when medical experts will do amazing rhetorical handstands to avoid labeling what happened to a child as abuse, and come up with other explanations, no matter how implausible? Of course! Provided those under suspicion are foster or adoptive parents. Honolulu Civil Beat has a case in point. 

● A stunning expose from the Arizona Republic: A group home operator gave $400,000 in campaign contributions to the governor. Shortly thereafter, that operator got a 30% rate increase. The state family police agency says the two are entirely unrelated.  But the agency’s explanation is nearly as bad. I have a blog post about it. 

● Arizona claimed they had to give that big increase because of a supposed shortage of foster homes. But when a desperate family, finding no place else to turn for help with their severely autistic son, turned to the state family police agency, the agency then refused to give the child back – for years. KNXV-TV reports that the family just won a big lawsuit. Bad as their ordeal was, at least it didn’t end the way it did for a Baltimore family in a similar situation. 

● Remember how Georgia responded to the government shutdown by cutting back on services to keep families together – instead of curbing its use of institutionalization, a “service” it uses at six times the national average? Well, now the shutdown is over and everything’s back to normal, right? On the contrary. The Imprint reports that Georgia is cutting back further. No, not the institutions, the Wraparound services that help therapeutic foster parents keep children out of institutions. (The institutions are taking a small hit – affecting services that let children visit their parents and attend court hearings – of course!)

● And speaking of institutions, when a chain of Nevada group homes came under fire for alleged abuse of residents, and the state Medicaid office announced it would terminate their contracts, a county judge rushed into action: She issued a temporary restraining order barring state and county agencies from inspecting and investigating the group homes! KLAS-TV in Las Vegas reports she has lifted that order. But the lawyer for the group homes is unhappy:

“It’s the annihilation of my client’s business,” [he] said. “What’s the hardship to the defendant?”

● The Imprint reports on Keeping Families Connected Minnesota, “launched in early October, [that] provides free or low-cost consultation and representation to kinship caregivers.” 

● It’s not just kin who often can’t get legal help.  WTVT in Tampa reports on the plight of foster children who have no one to fight in court for what they actually want. That’s because, unlike in some other states, they don’t get a lawyer. And, though the story doesn’t mention it, the biggest obstacle to changing that is, of course, the Florida CASA program, something we wrote about in 2019. 

● The New Yorker reports on a key problem with the Trump Administration’s so-called “fostering the future” initiative – and how it has a familiar ring.

● We’ve published our annual call on the child welfare establishment to stop those obscene celebrations of family executions.