NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending April 30, 2024

● Hey, remember when Texas passed laws setting reasonable limits on the vast power of the state’s family police agency, including higher standards before that agency can tear children from everyone they know and love?  Remember how that sparked all that fearmongering about how it would lead to an increase in horrific child abuse?  Remember how that fearmongering was led by groups like Texas CASA (which presumably wants to distract everyone from the huge study showing that their program is a failure)? Remember how their media allies at the Dallas Morning News and the Texas Tribune bought into it all and amplified it all?

Well, now The Imprint has gone back to see what actually happened.  Sorry CASA, they found that the fears “have not panned out.” From the story:

According to data from the state’s “Child Maltreatment Fatalities and Near Fatalities Annual Report” published last month, the decreased reliance on foster care has not resulted in an increase in child deaths.

 Fatalities where child abuse or neglect was confirmed have continued to decline through the recent period of fewer foster care removals. In 2023, 164 children died, which is 18% fewer than in 2021 and 30% fewer than in 2019. That places Texas from a spot well above the national average on child fatality rates, to below the nationwide rate.

● Two brief notes on the NCCPR Child Welfare Blog: The Kentucky Derby isn’t until this weekend. But we already have a winner in the Kentucky Irony Derby!  Meanwhile, in Minnesota, family policing agencies are claiming they just can’t afford to stop being racist.  The two brief posts are here.

● Meanwhile Essence has a report on the legislation those Minnesota agencies are opposing.  And even the foster-care panic fomenting Minneapolis Star Tribune finally felt compelled to do a serious story about it.

● Remember that amazing story in ProPublica about the “evaluator” in Colorado custody cases who always sided with foster parents when they “intervened” in court cases to try to keep someone else’s child?  Now, KUSA-TV reports, a judge has issued a scathing order demanding that a county family police agency release its own internal investigation of one of those cases, as well as others in that county.

● Kaiser Heath News has an overview of the harm of mandatory child abuse reporting laws, focused largely on Colorado, where a commission studying mandatory reporting laws is likely to recommend little more than token changes.

● As for what really can prevent child abuse: There’s still another study documenting the benefits of concrete financial help for families, in this case, paid family leave.

● KFMB-TV, San Diego reports that some California lawmakers are trying again to stop county family police agencies from swiping foster children’s money.

● But in New York City, The Daily News reported in early April, the city’s family police agency appears to be reneging on a promise to do the same, and making all sorts of widely-discredited excuses.  The Imprint also has a story,

● And in Michigan, the Detroit Free Press reports, the state’s family police agency shamelessly defends the practice, suggesting that it is somehow the obligation of foster children who receive such benefits to”reimburse the public taxpayer dollars that provide payment for the child's care.”

In Georgia, WXIA-TV has a follow-up to its in-depth series on the harm done by some “child abuse pediatricians.”

● In Utah, KSL-TV reports on a woman who, declaring herself a state employee, admonished anther women in a restaurant for wearing a skirt the state employee deemed to be too short.  She threatened to call Child Protective Services (because there were children in the restaurant). Then she allegedly took matters – and the skirt – into her own hands.

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

● KNXV-TV, Phoenix has more about an Arizona child who never needed to be taken from his father – and wound-up dying after placement in a group home.

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