To the surprise of no one, most of the stories and columns
this week focus on child welfare’s response to COVID-19. But nothing better sums up that response than
this tweet from the Movement for Family Power:
ALSO:
● I
have a column in Youth Today with an
overview: Canceled visits, court hearings to take children away but not to
send them home, no regard for the increased risk children will catch the virus
when they’re taken away, agencies that seem more interested in where their next
check is coming from than where the kids are going. In short, Child Welfare’s Response to
COVID-19 is Sickening.
● The Shriver Center on Poverty Law and several other law
and advocacy groups have
a great letter about how child welfare officials should be responding. What
is truly disheartening is that it ever needed to be written – and in particular
that child welfare agencies actually need to be asked not to count it against
parents if the parents can’t jump through all the required hoops -- when the agency’s
own response to COVID-19 took away the hoops.
● The Marshall Project
has an
excellent overview of the impact of COVID-19 on child welfare – including
the effects many other such stories leave out, such as the harm to children of
wholesale cancellation of visits and trapping them even longer in group homes
because the hearings to send them home have been canceled. NPR
also did a good job on this, particularly concerning visits.
● NCCPR Board Member Marty Beyer has
a column in the Chronicle of Social
Change on the importance of maintaining such visits, and how best to
make them work now. The Chronicle continues to track
new developments.
And in other news:
Rise interviews
Kelis Houston founder of Village Arms, on her efforts to get the Minnesota
Legislature to pass the African American Family Preservation Act.
