● There was a problem in this family. Then the child’s
charter school, which had refused repeated pleas for help, instead called the
child protective services agency – which made everything far worse. It’s
another excellent story from Rise,
the New York City-based magazine written by parents who have lost children to
foster care.
● Rise is one example of the impressive network of family
advocacy that has dramatically lessened the harm of the child welfare system in
New York City. In the British journal apolitical, a key figure in creating
that infrastructure, David Tobis, writes about how parent
advocacy is spreading around the world.
● Now the bad news: The child protective services agency in
Pittsburgh is ramping up the child welfare surveillance state: Starting next
year, they’ll try to slap a predictive analytics "scarlet number"
child abuse “risk score” on every child at birth. Consent will be assumed
unless families opt out – and they’ll pay a price for that, too. I
have a post about it on this blog.
● Pittsburgh is doing it in the name of “prevention.” But
there’s no need for an Orwellian algorithm to target prevention. There are many better ways. As it happens,
this week the American Bar Association published
an article about one of them in Washington State.
● New Mexico also is looking at improving
legal representation for families in child welfare cases.
● Here’s the first rule of heroism: Real heroes don’t go
around proclaiming themselves “heroes.” Here’s the second rule: People who are
truly dedicated to helping children don’t expect worshipful treatment just for
showing up. In
Youth Today I write that The Foster
Care System Needs to Get its Heroes Straight – and I list a few of my own
child welfare heroes.
● In last week’s round-up, I wrote that whenever you think
the child welfare system can’t get any uglier, someone turns over another rock
and a whole new batch of ugly turns up. Looks like it happened again. It has to do with one of the myriad ways of
funding foster care that tends to get little attention: Medicaid. The
Chronicle of Social Change reports
(subscription required) that states have been using Medicaid funds to help pay
to institutionalize children in residential treatment centers. In many cases that may be illegal. The federal agency that is supposed to police
this says it has no way to track it.
This all came to light indirectly, thanks to the Family First Act. It’s a very complicated story, but it’s well
worth the trip into the weeds.
