NCCPR in the Arizona Capitol Times: DCS is on probation; here’s how to fix it

The Arizona Legislature has, in effect, put the Department of Child Safety on probation, allowing it to continue to function for another four years instead of the customary eight  The decision is a healthy recognition that DCS, both in its current form and when it was a division of the Department of Economic Security, often does enormous harm to the children it is meant to help. 

But recognition is just step one. Lawmakers need to understand what created this mess and how to fix it.  The root of the problem is a fanatical drive to tear apart families that has plagued the state for decades. … 

Read the full column in the Arizona Capitol Times

And the winner of the Kentucky Irony Derby is …

The Kentucky Derby isn’t run until May 4.  But when it comes to the Kentucky Irony derby, we already have a winner! 

WDRB-TV in Louisville has a story with this headline: “Norton Children's opens new center combatting child abuse at the Home of the Innocents.”  For a split second, I thought: Wow! They’re putting in monitors to stop the child abuse at Home of the Innocents – abuse exposed in this story from the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting. 

No such luck.  The new center is just another “counseling” and “parent education” program.  But hey, when your state supposedly is a cesspool of depravity with vastly more child abuse than most, won’t anything help?  Except that is a myth, repeated over and over by those still wedded to promoting what’s been aptly called “health terrorism” in which horror stories and distorted data are used to stampede people away from real solutions.

Yes Minnesota DOES have the money to implement the African-American Family Preservation Act

“We don’t have enough money to stop being racist!”

Well, no, county family police agencies in Minnesota (where counties run these systems) didn’t say it in those words.  But in this excellent story from Minnesota Public Radio that’s essentially the argument put forth by county family policing agencies opposing a new version of the Minnesota African American Family Preservation Act. 

That is just more b.s. 

Just as Minnesota takes away children at a rate nearly double the national average, Minnesota spends on child welfare at a rate even more than double the national average. And yes, NCCPR has an index to document that, too.  

In its own depressing way, this makes sense: The great paradox of “child welfare” is that the worse the option for children the more it costs.  Safe, proven approaches to keeping families together cost less than family foster homes, which cost less than group homes, which cost less than institutions.  So stop wasting all that money on needless foster care and you’ll have all you need to stop being racist. 

And there is nothing terribly complicated about implementing the African American Family Preservation Act.  Contrary to what some counties apparently are saying, workers don’t need vast amounts of “training” to know that if the family lacks adequate food, clothing, shelter and/or child care, they should provide the food, clothing, shelter and/or child care – and it will cost less than foster care. 

The counties don’t lack the money. They lack the will. 

For more context on Minnesota, see this NCCPR opinion column in The Imprint.

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending April 16, 2024

● CNN reports on how some hospitals finally are moving to put the needs of children first. They’re no longer as willing to automatically turn in to the family police anyone who’s pregnant but is using drugs – because doing that is the perfect way to scare new mothers away from prenatal care and giving birth in a hospital. 

● But the bad news continues in Maine, where demagoguery by a former public official and a current child welfare “ombudsman” continues to fuel foster-care panic.  Now, the Maine Monitor reports, children are trapped in foster care even longer before even getting a chance to be set free – because there are not enough attorneys for their parents. 

● Things are not as bad in Massachusetts – but the Boston Globe reports that, in a state that tears apart families at a rate 60% above the national average – and spends on “child welfare” at roughly the fourth highest rate in America, somehow lawmakers can’t come up with funding to maintain even a few highly-successful programs providing high-quality preventive legal services to families. 

● Speaking of foster-care panic, a well-meaning U.S. Senator has issued a report that may well kick a foster-care panic in Georgia into overdrive.  I have a column about it in the Georgia Recorder. 

● No state is worse than West Virginia, the child removal capital of America, where almost every Black child is born with a family police target on their back.  I have a column about it in West Virginia Watch. 

● But there's better news from Minnesota: another sign that not only Minnesota lawmakers but also media aren't going to let the Minneapolis Star Tribune stampede them into another foster-care panic. Minnesota Public Radio reports on the real problems in the system - the ones the Star Tribune seems to prefer to play down.  And I have a blog post on the latest excuse some Minnesota counties are offering up for not doing anything about it.

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

● Family police agencies love to tout figures that, when they, in effect, investigate themselves they find very little abuse in foster care. Next time that happens, please keep this in mind: In Texas, the Texas Tribune reports, the family police agency is so willfully blind to such abuse that a federal court is fining the agency $100,000 – per day. [UPDATE: But an appeals court has stayed the fines until the Texas family police can appeal.]

In Sacramento, the Sacramento Bee reports that 

Sacramento city and county have paid a $300,000 settlement to the parents of an infant who died after he was allegedly wrongfully placed in foster care. 

And Honolulu Civil Beat reports that

The state has tentatively agreed to pay $750,000 to settle a lawsuit over the mysterious death of a 3-year-old boy in state foster custody in 2017 on the Big Island.

NCCPR in Georgia Recorder: Ossoff’s report could leave Georgia with the same lousy child welfare system – only bigger

As soon as Sen. Jon Ossoff released his report on massive failures at the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services, DFCS fired back, accusing Ossoff of “political gamesmanship.” 

Actually, it’s worse.

There is every indication that Ossoff is sincere and genuinely wants to help vulnerable children. But that will only make it harder to persuade him that, because of a critical error in his analysis, his report may trigger a response that makes everything even worse. ...

Read the full commentary in the Georgia Recorder

NCCPR in West Virginia Watch: West Virginia: Child removal capital of America

I have followed the harm done to children by America’s child welfare systems for nearly half a century, first as a journalist, now as an advocate. In all that time I have never encountered a state so mind-bogglingly fanatical about tearing apart families that even foster care agencies think it’s too much – until now.

Yes, even agencies typically paid for each day they hold a child in care say West Virginia is taking away too many children. They’re right. Year after year, West Virginia is the child removal capital of America. ...

Read the full column in West Virginia Watch

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending April 10, 2024

● Last week, in a column for The Imprint, I wrote about how, though the journalism of child welfare is improving, some places are still promoting the big lie of American child welfare.  They scapegoat family preservation for child abuse deaths and encourage foster-care panic. I cited the Minneapolis Star Tribune as a prime example.  They’re doing it for the second time in a decade – but this time state legislators don’t seem to be buying it. 

More evidence that lawmakers are not being suckered came at a dramatic public hearing on a new, expanded version of the Minnesota African-American Family Preservation Act.  The Star Tribune didn’t cover the hearing.  Fortunately, The Imprint did.  

● In 2022, the worst foster-care panic took place in Louisiana.  I have a column about how that’s hurting the state’s children in the Louisiana Illuminator. 

● Typically, when I compare New York to Philadelphia, Philadelphia is on the losing end.  But this time, some New Yorkers want to cave in to threats from private foster care agencies, but Philadelphia won’t.  The issue is accountability, in the form of lawsuits against the agencies by children abused on their watch.  In New York, the agencies want taxpayers to fork over up to $200 million to bail them out – otherwise, they threaten to go out of business.  They seem to think that would be a bad thing.  Some New York lawmakers who don’t know any better are proposing to cave in.  

In Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports, agencies sought a similar bailout.  But to her great credit, the head of Philadelphia’s “child welfare” agency, Kimberly Ali, said no.  Though it will cost her agency a lot in time and money, she refused to cave.  “What the provider wanted the city to do was pay to indemnify them for their own negligence,” she said, “and that is what the city was not going to do.” 

And the sky has not fallen.  In fact, a whole lot of other agencies are lining up to replace the quitters.

● Philadelphia isn’t the only place pulling ahead of New York in some ways.  In 2023, Texas passed a Family Miranda law – so families know their rights when the family police are at the door.  It passed with overwhelming bipartisan support.  Andrew Brown of the Texas Public Policy Foundation was in Albany, explaining how it was done on Spectrum News Capital Tonight.  He was joined by Angela Olivia Burton, a leader of the fight to pass such legislation in New York.   

● One of the worst things family police agencies do to children is to take them away from domestic violence survivors because those survivors “allowed” the children to “witness domestic violence.”  Under these circumstances, the trauma of removal is compounded.  Now a Mississippi prosecutor is taking it a step further.  The Mississippi Free Press reports the prosecutor is trying to take away a mother’s children because, in effect, she allegedly allowed her 11-year-old to get in the way of a police officer’s bullet. 

● WBUR Public Radio has more on that significant change for the better in how the largest hospital system in Massachusetts is handling issues involving pregnancy and substance use. 

● Change also is coming to Washington, D.C., where the Washington Post reports on a guaranteed income pilot program aimed specifically at mothers under surveillance by the D.C. family police agency. 

● And the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that the Missouri Legislature is coming closer to prohibiting the state from swiping foster children’s money.