● Last week, we highlighted a story about the powerful using their great power to take a child from the powerless. Now, OSV News reports on another case where the same dynamic is at play.
● Business Insider has more about the Illinois guaranteed income pilot project, targeting families on the radar of the family police. As the story explains:
Studies and basic income pilots have previously found that cash payments can mitigate neglect by strengthening parents' access to basic necessities. Researchers have also told BI that reducing family financial stress can lead to lower rates of physical abuse and domestic violence.
Business Insider also has an overview of where such programs are underway - and where legislatures have actually banned them.
● When you begin a sentence with the words: “Yes, it’s Big Brother …” what is the only ethical way to end that sentence? Not the way a leading proponent of predictive analytics in child welfare ended it. I have a blog post on what she actually said – and why predictive analytics is the Project 2025 of child welfare.
● The New York Times has a terrifying story about a chain of private psychiatric hospitals holding patients against their will because of financial incentives. They’re paid for each day they hold the patient. What does that have to do with family policing? Private foster care agencies also are typically paid for each day they hold a child in “care.” And, as the New York Daily News pointed out nearly 50 years ago, they’ve been known to do the same thing.
In this week’s edition of The Horror Stories Go in All Directions:
●From NBC News, still another expose of still another residential treatment center.
A circuit court judge has ruled that the state was “grossly negligent” when it placed an eight-year-old boy in a foster home, where he was then repeatedly sexually abused for years.
