● FIRST UP A
REMINDER: On Thursday, April 9 at 11:00am Eastern, Jerry Milner, the
federal government’s point person for child welfare, will be among the
panelists on an American
Bar Association webinar about child welfare’s response to COVID-19. Other panelists are Milner’s special
assistant David Kelly, Kathleen Creamer of Community Legal Services of
Philadelphia and Judge Ernestine Gray, aka The child welfare judge who actually
follows the law.
● Milner sent out this great
letter to courts and child welfare agencies urging them not to
impose blanket bans on court hearings to reunify families and wholesale bans on
visits between foster children and their parents. Unfortunately, many child
welfare agencies are ignoring this guidance and one is outright lying about
what the guidance says. Can
you guess which one?
● Most local news stories about child welfare and COVID-19
have one obsession: The
false claim that with schools closed children are at risk of falling victim
to what some have called “A pandemic of child abuse.” Last
week I noted some commendable exceptions.
Now, there are a few more:
The websites of both
ABC News and NBC
News looked at the enormous harm being done to families by those court
delays and cancellation of visits. (And you
can read more here about the case at the center of ABC’s story.) Locally
there were stories from The Day in New London, CT, the online
news site BillyPenn (which is how I found out the Philadelphia child
welfare agency is lying about federal guidance – oops,
gave it away!) and WHYY
Public Radio, also in Philadelphia.
● There is an
excellent commentary in the Houston
Chronicle on not confusing poverty with neglect during this time of
exceptional need – and it’s from the CEO of Texas Court-Appointed Special
Advocates (CASA). Yes, I’m serious about
this.
● Also from Texas, Andrew Brown, director of the Center for
Families and Children at the Texas Public Policy Foundation has
a column in the San Antonio Express News
on how courts should respond to the
current crisis.
● Once the pandemic is over a lot of people will be looking
for jobs. Thanks to years of effort by
family advocates and family defenders, that will be a little less difficult for
some impoverished parents in New York State.
Under a new law it will be a little harder to be placed on
the state’s massive blacklist of people who allegedly abused or neglected their
children, and a little easier to get taken off when the listing is unjust – as
it often is. In other words, during this “Child Abuse Prevention Month,” New
York is helping prevent what child welfare agencies often define as child abuse
by helping impoverished families provide food, clothing and shelter for their
children. The
Chronicle of Social Change has a
story about the new law.
● And speaking of Child Abuse Prevention Month, I’ve
reposted NCCPR’s annual reminder not to succumb to the hype and hysteria
that so often accompanies it – a reminder that has extra relevance this year.
In other news
● Long after the pandemic is over, we may find that the most
important child welfare news last week had nothing to do with COVID-19. I have long criticized the Family First Act
as overhyped and not likely to do much good.
That’s because only a narrow range of services can be funded under the
act and they have to meet extremely strict criteria proving they are “evidence
based.” (If the same criteria were
applied to foster care and residential treatment neither would get a dime of
federal funding.)
Last week, one of the most important and most effective
programs in child welfare qualified. The clearinghouse for determining if
programs are sufficiently “evidence based” to get funding under the law has
given its highest rating to the Homebuilders Intensive Family Preservation
Services (IFPS) program. These NCCPR Issue Papers explain what Homebuilders is and the mass of evidence that it works
The very term “family preservation” was coined to apply to
this program, which dates all the way back to 1974. It had the potential to
transform child welfare. For that very reason it was marginalized, thanks
to a smear campaign by the child welfare establishment. Homebuilders and drug treatment are almost
the only programs Family First will fund that might actually do some
good. So I hope advocates will press states to put the bulk of Family First
funding into those programs.
