NCCPR in the Alaska Beacon: The foster care system is failing Alaska children. So are those trying to fix it.

Last August, the Beacon published a story under the headline “Is Alaska’s foster care system failing children? A federal trial underway now could decide.” 

My answer is: Yes, Alaska’s foster care system is failing children – horrendously. But the current lawsuit won’t fix it. 

Last month, frustrated lawmakers bemoaned the failure of the Office of Children’s Services to implement reforms.

The failure to implement reform and the inevitable failure of the lawsuit have the same fundamental cause. … 

Read the full column in the Alaska Beacon.

Foster care in Tennessee: When the leaders of the “child welfare” agency forgot their disguises

The Tennessee family police agency has a plan for what to do
with foster children who get out of line.

Decades ago, the father of family defense and family advocacy (and also the President of NCCPR), Prof. Martin Guggenheim, cut to the heart of the failure of family policing when he said: “There’s a lot of hate disguised as love in this system.” 

I thought of that when I watched two top “child welfare” officials in Tennessee forget their disguises. I’m not even talking about contempt for parents; they forgot to disguise what they really think of the children – once they get older and are no longer cute little “kiddos.” 

It happened at a legislative hearing in Tennessee concerning a bill supported by the state family police agency, the Department of Children’s Services. The bill would essentially allow DCS to throw foster youth into jail whenever the agency felt they’d gotten out of line. 

Oh, wait. I’m sure DCS would want you to know these are not “jails” – rather, they are what news accounts call “jail-like facilities” - detention centers where, under current law, you are not allowed to place a child unless that child is convicted of a crime. But that’s certainly not a jail! 

Tennessee already allows foster youth who committed no crime to be handcuffed. As WTVF-TV in Nashville reports, the cuffs were used on a 12-year-old believed to be autistic, who refused to go to bed. 

But that’s not enough for DCS Legislative Director Jim Layman and DCS Commissioner Margie Quin, who testified in favor of the throw-foster-kids-in-jail bill. 

The leader of the Tennessee "child welfare" agency is demanding
accountability -- from the children. (Still frame from WTVF)

The story was first reported by WPLN Public Radio, then WTVF. They cover much the same ground,  but the video story has one advantage: Even in short soundbites, you can see and practically feel what those DCS officials really think of the children they are supposed to protect.  Watch as Quin says foster youth need to be effectively jailed to be held accountable for “violent” behavior because "that lack of accountability gives rise to additional violent behavior." 

It’s even more striking when the comments of those who would be the victimizers if this bill becomes law are compared to the love and understanding shown by one of those who could have been a victim, former foster youth Ella Bet-Ami.  You can see it all here.

 Of course, when foster youth commit violent acts, they already can be criminally charged and placed in “jail-like facilities.” So who does Quin really have in mind? 

Ella Bet-Ami knows what the rhetoric about violent behavior is really all about. Here’s an excerpt from WPLN’s story: 

“We don’t get to make mistakes,” Bet-Ami said. “We don’t get to have temper tantrums. We don’t get to have bad days. We’re not allowed to be children.” … She said that kids like her are living on a knife’s edge — getting into trouble could cost them their home, their foster family, and under a new proposal, their freedom. 

“Foster children are entitled to a childhood in the same way other children are entitled to a childhood,” she said. “It should not be a childhood with the sword of prison dangling over their heads.” 

Don’t believe the usual excuses 

What you heard and saw in these stories is young people like Ms. Bet-Ami described as so incredibly difficult that somehow they’d have to be jailed – and, says Quin, held accountable. Remember that when you hear officials all over the country say that it’s the rest of us who don’t understand when they tell us that the children supposedly are just sooooo much more difficult now, with oh sooooo complex behavioral needs that they simply can’t be placed in a home setting. 

It’s not true of young people like Ms. Bet-Ami. But it’s also not true when it comes to children who really do have serious behavioral problems. Because the research is overwhelming that institutionalization of any kind, let alone a jail, doesn’t work and often does enormous harm. That’s true even when institutions aren’t rife with abuse. But often, of course, abuse is rampant, as with institutions in, among other places, Arizona, Kentucky, Indiana, Utah, Iowa, Oklahoma, Rhode Island,  Washington State, Arkansas, New York, Connecticut, Ohio,  Idaho – and Tennessee. 

In contrast, what has been proven to work is bringing Wraparound programs right into a family home or, when a child really must be removed, into a foster home.  You won’t find many young people more “difficult” than the one the late Karl Dennis, the father of Wraparound, talks about in this video: 

And no, the problem isn’t a “shortage” of foster homes either. Tennessee tears apart families at a rate more than 80% above the national average, even when rates of child poverty are factored in. It's an ugly track record that goes back decades. Stop taking away children when parents are guilty of nothing more than, say, driving while Black, as happened in a notorious Tennessee case, spend the money you’re spending on institutionalizing kids on Wraparound services instead, and there will be plenty of good, safe family placements for the children who need them. 

But of course that would require an agency led by people with guts, vision and imagination – or at least an agency led by people who are a bit less hostile toward the kids they’re supposed to be protecting. 

Two footnotes 

1. Tennessee is among the first states to sign on to a new federal child welfare initiative. But I wonder if Gov. Bill Lee and Commissioner Margie Quin need to reread the document. The initiative is called a home for every child, not a cell for every child. 

2. On the matter of accountability. Commissioner Quin: 

● You run a system that tears apart families at a rate more than 80% above the national average.

● You run a system that allows an autistic 12-year-old to be handcuffed for refusing to go to bed.

● You run a system willing to tear apart a family for driving while Black.

● You oversee facilities rife with abuse. 

So by all means, Commissioner Quin. Tell us again why it’s the children who need to be held accountable.

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending March 3, 2026

● America’s leading journalism think tank and training center, the Poynter Institute, published an article on “How to cover child welfare — and not just the system.” Some of the advice on sourcing struck me as particularly insightful :-)

● Prof. Kelley Fong, co-author of the landmark study showing that more foster care does not reduce child abuse deaths, writes in the Sacramento Bee about better ways to keep children safe. 

● Getting placed on a state “central register” of alleged child abusers is incredibly easy – in most states a caseworker just has to check a box on a form. Getting off again is incredibly hard. Most states have an administrative appeals process, but the deck is stacked – impoverished families have no right to a lawyer – and the process can drag on for months, even years. Meanwhile, the poverty that may have been confused with neglect in the first place can deepen, because the listing often bars those listed from many jobs. And, of course, the listing drives up a family’s “risk score,” making it more likely that if there’s another investigation, the children will be needlessly thrown into foster care. The Imprint and  The New York Times have stories on a lawsuit demanding that at least the prolonged delays end in New York State. 

● An Alaska legislator has an idea for an approach to keeping siblings together that, as far as I know, would be unique in the nation. The Alaska Beacon reports on a bill that would change the state’s law concerning termination of children’s rights to their parents (a more accurate term than termination of parental rights) so that children’s rights to their siblings would be maintained.

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending February 24, 2026

● ProPublica has just published a blockbuster story all about how the Trump Administration is trying to weaponize family policing and broad, vague definitions of “neglect” to ratchet up deportations. The Obama and Clinton Administrations are not blameless either. Most importantly, it’s all one more consequence of how the child welfare establishment has spent decades confusing poverty with neglect. 

● A Michigan state agency commissioned a report on the horrors inflicted on Native American children in that state’s so-called “boarding schools” in which native children were incarcerated during the 19^th and 20^th Centuries. One of the Michigan institutions didn’t close until 1983. The 300-page report includes accounts from survivors and descendants of survivors. It recommended an official apology from the state. The report is explosive. How explosive? The first thing the state did was try to cover it up.  Fortunately, the online news site Bridge Michigan obtained a copy. They also have a follow-up story. 

● Family policing continues to traumatize Native children, of course. The Imprint reports on a study of the long-term effects. 

● A hideous bill pushed by the family police agency in Tennessee would let the family police effectively jail any foster youth who gets out of line. Two things are striking in this story about the bill from WPLN public radio: 1. While family police agency leaders often make clear how much they hate the parents, rarely do such leaders give away how much they can’t stand the kids – once they’re no longer cute little “kiddos.” 2. The extraordinary response from former foster youth Ella Bat-Ami: 

“We don’t get to make mistakes,” she said. “We don’t get to have temper tantrums. We don’t get to have bad days. We’re not allowed to be children.” … She said that kids like her are living on a knife’s edge — getting into trouble could cost them their home, their foster family, and under a new proposal, their freedom. 

“Foster children are entitled to a childhood in the same way other children are entitled to a childhood,” she said. “It should not be a childhood with the sword of prison dangling over their heads.” 

● How foster care fails generation after generation, abuse in foster care, and the vital role of housing in keeping families together – or keeping them apart – all are illustrated in this column from The Imprint. Read about what it took to keep this family together, and you may find yourself asking a question I’ve posed before: Why is foster care so easy and everything else so hard? 

● The Imprint reports on a study that finds the rate of non-fatal drug overdoses among foster children is vastly higher than the rate for poor children in general. Intentional overdoses took place more than twice as often as unintentional overdoses. 

The story quotes Dr. Rachel Keefe of Texas Children’s Hospital, who said such a case typically 

“isn’t about chronic substance misuse. It’s about overwhelming feelings — hopelessness, anger, shame, grief — and a young person trying to make the pain stop at that moment,” she said. “When medications are widely available, they are often what gets used.” 

And, of course, since foster youth so often are doped up on psychiatric meds to keep them docile for group home and institution staff, such drugs are more likely to be widely available.

Of course, foster care apologists will rush to claim the disparity is all the fault of the children’s birth parents. But recall the Swedish study, which compared foster youth to comparably-maltreated children left in their own homes. That study found that the foster children were more than four times more likely to be dead by age 20, and the largest single cause was suicide. 

● For this next story, I’ll just let the ironies speak for thesmevles: The adoptive parents promised Jane a forever family when she was eight years old. But, according to KNXV-TV in Phoenix: 

As she grew into a teenager, her increasingly complicated behavioral health needs made it difficult for her to remain safely at home, according to the couple. DCS became involved. Then, according to the [adoptive parents’] lawsuit "While awaiting placement in a behavioral health inpatient facility,” DCS placed Jane in a group home which “was not qualified or equipped to care for her needs.” 

So she ran away, was raped, and suffered “life-altering injuries.” Again, from the story: 

Jane is now 19 years old and living in a home for seriously mentally ill adults. If they prevail in the lawsuit, Jones told ABC15 they will use the money toward the young woman’s care needs. 

“If she doesn't have us, she's not going to make it,” Jones said.

There are three important new resources out this week: 

● The New York City Family Policy Project has a deep dive into the data on allegations of “educational neglect” in New York City. It turns out that, while the investigations inevitably are likely to inflict trauma, they actually find there is nothing wrong 91.5% of the time – which means all that time has been stolen from finding children in real danger. No wonder about half the states wisely do not include missing school as something to be investigated by the family police. See also the story in the New York Times New York Today newsletter. 

● You may recall the excellent story from The Marshall Project on how the family police harass new mothers who test positive for drug use – even when the test is wrong or the drug is medically prescribed. They’ve followed up with a database on how often such cases are referred for criminal prosecution in each state. 

● The Imprint has published its annual survey of foster home capacity. Mostly, it focuses on how many homes and “providers” there are. But there’s also a state-by-state figure for the snapshot number of children in foster care as of about March 31, 2025 – that’s six months more recent than the federal estimate. Notably, it includes figures from some states that claimed to be unable to provide the same data to the federal government. Two notes of caution: 

--The federal government has specific, if insufficiently stringent, criteria for what constitutes a placement in foster care. When states provide data to anyone else, they can use whatever definitions they want. But the Imprint survey data generally track the official figures pretty closely.

 --The so-called “family separation” index is infernally complex, easy to misunderstand and has other limits. I discuss them here.

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending February 17, 2026

Before the look back, a brief look ahead: 

● There’s a big event on Feb. 26: Check out this webinar, sponsored by the National Association of Counsel for Children, on The Legacy of Control: The Racist Roots of the Family Policing System. 

And now the news: 

● Remember how horrified we were when we saw pictures of Liam, the five-year-old boy detained by ICE? In Psychology Today, psychiatrist Rupinder Legha wants us to remember something else: 

[F]amily separation is systemic and … its harm extends far beyond immigration enforcement. 

Child welfare, foster care, and juvenile justice follow the same logic—separating families in the name of safety. In practice, though, they often end up causing predictable harm through separation, surveillance, and displacement that land hardest on Black and Brown communities. There have been countless instances of Black, Latine, and Indigenous children being removed from their families under the guise of protection—when the real issue is poverty, not neglect.​ 

Dr. Legha urges the research and provider communities to change course: 

Research conducted in child welfare and juvenile detention tends to normalize family separation because it often develops and evaluates therapeutic interventions within the very institutions perpetuating toxic stress. One study found that Black parents receiving parent training while under child welfare surveillance were depressed. The authors suggested adding depression treatment—instead of recognizing the likely role that the surveillance itself was likely playing. 

This research is rooted in circular logic: The more detention harms children’s mental health, the more we study how to treat them there, when instead we ought to be questioning the harm of the system itself. …

Providers might believe they are helping people in need. But I believe that instead they're legitimizing the idea that healing is possible while detained, which contradicts what we know about trauma and safety. Such providers might, for example, prescribe sleep aids for insomnia caused by sleeping in an unfamiliar or unsafe facility and antidepressants for sadness rooted in separation from family. Medicalizing predictable responses to confinement makes it challenging for them to question the confinement itself.

● Consider, for example, the ongoing detention of another little boy, not by ICE but by the Oregon family police agency. And while, normally, one might at least be able to draw the distinction that the family police are well-motivated, in this case, that’s not so clear. 

Last year, Oregon lawmakers refused to pass a bill sought by the family police and the governor that would make it easier to exile kids to out-of-state institutions and harder to prevent abuse in group homes and institutions. It was one of the few times Oregon’s way-too-influential Senator Soundbite, who has done so much to make a bad system worse, actually did the right thing – she opposed the bill. This case, reported by Oregon Public Broadcasting, sounds like it may have been motivated by revenge, at a 9-year-old boy’s expense. 

● Last week’s round-up included a link to this stunning investigative report from The Marshall Project on how the family police harass new mothers who test positive for drug use – even when the test is wrong or the drug is medically prescribed. Well, some new mothers, that is. In a blog post, we compare what The Marshall Project found to what happens when the mothers are white and affluent. 

● New York’s greedy private foster care agencies are back seeking a bailout to pay their insurance premiums. The premiums are high because so many children have been abused on their watch. This blog post explains why, if the latest scheme becomes law, no matter how abominably agencies allow the children in their care to be treated, and how much that jacks up their insurance premiums, they need never change, secure in the knowledge that taxpayers will pick up the tab. 

● Georgia has a law that guarantees parents accused of abuse by a medical professional the right to a second opinion. But, of course, a doctor can’t provide a second opinion without the medical records. Families say some of the places that diagnosed alleged abuse are stonewalling when it comes to providing the medical records. So now, WXIA-TV reports, one lawmaker is introducing a bill to fine providers who fail to promptly provide those records. 

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

● From the Redding Record Searchlight 

A young woman who said she was sexually abused by two men for years while living in a Shasta County foster home has sued her former foster parents, as well as a second man who she said repeatedly raped her. … 

The victim's aunt and her psychotherapist made reports to county officials in 2014, the lawsuit naming the Sheriff's Office said. No action was taken to investigate their claims, the suit alleged. 

At one point, the teen tried to tell a Shasta County official making a routine visit to the foster home in 2008 about the ongoing sexual abuse, said the lawsuit naming [the county child welfare agency]. The unidentified official who came to the home called her "a liar," the lawsuit said, and told her if any abuse was happening, she had been "asking for it."

Child welfare in New York: Beware of a backdoor bailout for private foster care agencies

If the latest scheme becomes law, no matter how abominably agencies allow the children in their care to be treated, and how much that jacks up their insurance premiums, they need never change, secure in the knowledge that taxpayers will pick up the tab. 

When state legislators started easing statutes of limitations to allow child abuse survivors to sue, the lawmakers probably had in mind institutions like churches, the Boy Scouts, etc. But it should have come as no surprise that a great many lawsuits have targeted private foster care agencies, because so very many children were abused on their watch (in the name of “child protection,” “child safety,” and “erring on the side of the child,” of course). 

Particularly vulnerable: agencies running the worst form of “care” – group homes and institutions. As a result, their insurance premiums have skyrocketed. Some agencies even had to close. 

Here’s the most important thing to understand: Private agencies that run group homes and institutions having to shut down is not a crisis or a calamity. On the contrary, it’s great news! As I posted two years ago: 

The group homes and institutions are harmful even when they´re not rife with physical and sexual abuse.  The whole model is a proven failure, and there are far better alternatives.  But these giant, greedy, well-connected agencies are scarfing up all the money for such alternatives. (And when I say greedy: Have you seen Ron Richter´s salary for running one of them?) 

[Update: he’s left, but continues to ally with those wedded to a take-the-child-and-run approach to child welfare.] 

But the agencies are doing what they do best: predicting that horrible calamities will befall children unless they get some kind of bailout and/or near immunity from accountability to all those children horrifically abused on their watch. 

Two years ago, California agencies predicted foster children would suddenly be homeless if they had to close. I explain here why that is nonsense. Sice them, at least 19 California agencies reportedly have closed, and yet the counties that run child welfare in California apparently are coping just fine. It helps, of course, that California has been safely and steadily reducing the number of children torn from their families in the first place. 

Nevertheless, California fell for the fearmongering, at least in part. So far, New York has not. 

But according to Insurance Business, an insurance industry trade publication, those greedy agencies are trying again. This time, they’ve gotten at least two lawmakers to introduce a bill to provide a so-called $20-million “bridge fund.” Worse, the bill would require the state agency that sets rates for these places to make absolutely positively sure the rates are set so high they cover the entire cost of insurance. 

This is a backdoor bailout. Under this provision, no matter how abominably agencies allow the children in their care to be treated, and how much that jacks up their insurance premiums, they need never change, secure in the knowledge that taxpayers will pick up the tab. 

And if anyone needs another reminder of why that’s a bad idea, check out this lawsuit settlement in California – in a case where, one would have thought, the private agency would have been especially vigilant.

Image from Easy Peasy AI

Since the child welfare establishment keeps telling us there’s no racism in their field, there must be some other explanation for this:

 

This is what happens when Black mothers use marijuana gummies (From The Marshall Project):

 Ayanna Harris-Rashid was sitting up in bed, her newborn son latched to her breast, one hand scrolling on her phone, when the police called. She was wanted on a felony charge of child neglect. 

Harris-Rashid had just had her third child in March 2021. To ease pain and frequent nausea, she had used legal CBD gummies and a topical hemp-based ointment throughout her pregnancy. But at the hospital, she and the baby tested positive for marijuana, prompting providers to file a report with the South Carolina Department of Social Services, which forwarded the information to police, records show. Now an officer was demanding that Harris-Rashid turn herself in. 

Harris-Rashid said goodbye to her children and husband. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered to her newborn son. A friend drove her to the sheriff’s office, where she was handcuffed, strip-searched and placed for the night in a cold and crowded cell. By the time she left the jail the following morning, her milk supply had decreased and she found she could no longer breastfeed. The charge was eventually dropped. 

“They shook me bare. They made me feel very indecent and inhumane,” she said, adding, “This is a person, a woman, a mother, an actual individual. What justifies this?” 

This is what happens when white mothers use marijuana gummies (From Boston Magazine): 

Cannabis gummies have become as ubiquitous as Lululemon leggings and UppaBaby strollers, particularly among millennial mothers in their thirties and early forties. Moms are popping edibles as they’re folding laundry in the evening, before heading to back-to-school night, and during Friday-afternoon playdates. They’re setting up elaborate home bars decked out with cannabis-infused drinks and bowls of colorful gummies and hosting Cannabis & Crafts nights. … 

The first time [Kate] tried a gummy, “it was just wonderful,” she says. The self-dubbed “100 percent type A” mother found herself less wound-up and more relaxed with her two children. And she appreciates that she’s not drinking in front of her kids. At a Fourth of July gathering, Kate split a gummy with her close friend as the children ran around the yard. ... It’s been a good fix for me.”