● We begin, of course, with the superb story from CBS News Sunday Morning – a story that, in 12 minutes tells you everything about how “child welfare” really works. And notice the "age restriction" notice. In other words: what the family police agencies that are supposed to "protect" children really do is so traumatic, children shouldn't see it!
For additional context on the first case discussed in the story, from Colorado, see this story from Diane Redleaf in Reason, and this NCCPR Blog post. For additional context on the second case, from Missouri, see this story from Laura Ziegler of KCUR Public Radio.
● Speaking of Colorado, that state is going to spend nearly $100,000 and two years on a task force to figure out why kids run from “residential treatment.” In Youth Today I save them a little money and a lot of time.
● In The Imprint, Prof. Vivek Sankaran writes about what, for children, probably is the most dangerous phrase in the entire child welfare lexicon.
● Gothamist has a good follow-up to the New York Times story about that report on racial bias in the New York City family policing agency that the agency commissioned and then tried to hide. NCCPR has context on the report and the Times story.
● In Washington State, local police say they didn't issue an AMBER Alert when a foster mother allegedly kidnapped a 5-year-old foster child in her care in part because "there had been no previous issues.” Well, sure! It’s not like she’d ever been accused of kidnapping a foster child before, right? Oh, and more than two weeks after they disappeared, only KING-TV is covering the story regularly – the Seattle Times has written nothing. I have a blog post about all of this.
● Child welfare experts have written still another column on the enormous harm that the so-called Adoption and Safe Families Act does to children. Read the commentary from Sara Block and Melissa Staas in the Chicago Tribune. And you can find all the recent commentaries here.
● In The Progressive, Hina Naveed discusses the excellent report she wrote on racial and class bias in family policing for Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union.
And finally …
● Last month I wrote a blog post about a scathing dissent by Michigan Supreme Court Chief Justice Bridget McCormack in a termination of parental rights case (the same dissent Prof. Sankaran cites in the column discussed above). Among the reasons cited for prohibiting the child from ever living with her mother again: The mother “had a “history of giving birth to children and relying on others to raise them when she could not cope.” So I thought I’d just leave this here.
