●Last
week I posted a link to an op-ed column by a family defender in
New York City about the kind of family that doesn’t have to worry about having
child protective services in its life.
This week: Another family defender writes in the New York Daily News about the kind of family that does.
●From
Honolulu Civil Beat: An excellent story about a family faced
with two kinds of trauma. First, the children were needlessly taken because the
mother was herself a victim of domestic violence. And now, the mother may be denied the career
she’s wanted all her life because she can’t get off the state’s central registry
of alleged child abusers – a registry she never should have been on in the
first place.
●I
have a
column in Youth Today about how
the foster care-industrial complex is trying to get legislation through Congress
that would more than double federal foster care spending – and remove the last federal
fiscal brake on needless foster care.
●Vivek
Sankaran has
a column about how his own experiences
illustrate what’s revealed by a new study: High-quality family defense, using
the model pioneered in New York City, dramatically curbs needless foster care,
with no compromise of child safety. And
this story discusses East Bay Family Defenders, which is bringing the
New York model of family defense to Alameda County, California.
●In
another column Sankaran talks about
foster youth who endured years of abuse in foster care, finding strength in
their relationship with each other – and their mother.
●I
have a blog post about why Philadelphia’s Department of Human Services is
the Kellyanne Conway of child welfare agencies. They both have a fondness for
“alternative facts.” (And, of course,
they’re both deeply involved with the needless separation of families.)
●
Youth Today has a story about a court decision
that stops the New York City Administration for Children’s Services from
sending out the police to arrest foster youth who run away.
●
And The New York Times has an op-ed that says not one word
about foster care or the child welfare system – and yet explains exactly how to
fix it.
