● Last week’s round-up included an excellent
op-ed from The Hill about doctors
who actually want their peers to “think less” before suspecting their patients’
parents of child abuse and referring the children to hospitals for batteries of
tests – and quite possibly calls to child protective services leading to foster
care. What some of these doctors want is
even worse; a wholesale expansion of the child welfare surveillance state. I
have a blog post about it.
● A tragic example of how the “think less” approach plays
out in real life can be seen in this
excellent op-ed column for The New York
Times from Jessica Horan-Block, a lawyer for the Bronx Defenders. It’s called “A Child Bumps Her Head. What
Happens Next Depends on Race.”
● There’s also a great
op-ed in the New York Daily News. This one is from Jeannette Vega,
training director for Rise. It’s about legislation to
bring modest reforms to New York State’s Central Registry of alleged child
abusers. The bill is now on Gov. Andrew
Cuomo’s desk.
● Also on the governor’s desk: Legislation that would allow
children to keep in contact with their birth parents even after parental rights
are terminated, if a judge found it to be in the children’s best
interests. The Albany Times Union has two letters supporting
the bill. One
is from family defense pioneer David Lansner. The other is from lawyers
whose organizations represent 90 percent of the children in child welfare
cases in New York City.
● In Talk Poverty, Elizabeth
Brico has an
excellent overview of how financial incentives encourage the misuse and
overuse of foster care.
● Remember that story about the school district in
Pennsylvania that was threatening to report families to child protective
services if they didn’t pay school lunch debts?
It caused a nationwide furor. But
that district is not alone. The
Philadelphia Inquirer reports
that several southern New Jersey school districts have policies that allow
school officials to do the same thing. So,
in an effort to educate the educators who really ought to know better, here
again is a blog post about why this is so harmful to children.
