NCCPR news and commentary roundup, week ending October 22, 2024

● Dr. Sharon McDaniel, a pioneer in doing kinship foster care the right way, speaks out about the enormous harm of doing it the wrong way – through the subterfuge known as “hidden foster care.” In a commentary for The Imprint, she writes:

 I want to be clear that while I believe hidden foster care should be eradicated, the path to doing so is not to simply place all of those children in the formal foster care system instead. Through an upstream preventative lens that narrows the front door and addresses poverty through support and not victimization, I assert fewer children will need any form of formal care as their parents will have the necessary community support and resources to care for their children without child welfare intervention. …

But when children really must be taken from their parents, Dr. McDaniel writes:

 I have spent my career pushing for relatives to be the solution. But they cannot be prioritized on the cheap and with less rights. They must be supported and provided the appropriate legal protections in place for any placement through the formal foster care system. Anything less is a disservice to the families and children we claim to protect.

● The Imprint has a story about an encouraging trend in high-quality legal representation for families: providing that representation before a case goes to court. 

● That kind of legal representation is a key recommendation in an excellent, extensively documented report on the Illinois family policing system from the Illinois Black Advocacy Initiative. Other recommendations include full transparency, narrowing the scope of family policing and bolstering economic and social supports, including reparations for Black families. 

● In Michigan, there are counties that barely provide even the most minimal “representation” to children or parents.  The Detroit Free Press reports on recommendations from a Task Force addressing that issue.

● LAist reports on another new study, this one from UCLA’s Pritzker Center for Strengthening Children and Families. This one concerns how survivors of domestic violence are victimized by the family police. From the story: 

“[The Department of Children and Family Services] was asking the survivors, ‘Why don't you just leave?’ The courts were asking ‘Why didn't you just leave? Why did you keep your kid in this situation?’ And what we know is that it's not that easy to leave,” [Pritzker Center Executive Director Taylor] Dudley said. … “They wanted to leave but they had nowhere to go, and because of that their children were removed,” she said. 

But notice how, even here, the focus is on making it easier for survivors to flee – not on, say, removing the abuser from the home. 

And, unlike the Illinois study, the recommendations in this study, while not bad, tend to be vague and tepid, perhaps because Pritzker partnered with DCFS to produce it. 

● Rep. Gwen Moore, who has sponsored federal legislation to make it harder for family police agencies to confuse poverty with neglect is the guest on The Imprint podcast this week. 

● Imagine a world in which every pregnant woman was forced to admit a "surveillance" agent into their home at any time, day or night, to check on fetal “well-being.” Imagine if the surveillance continued until the child was old enough for preschool. And imagine if the price for not meeting the government spy’s standard for “well-being” were to have the child taken forever.  No, it’s not Project 2025. It was part of a proposal from someone who was once one of the most prominent and influential self-proclaimed liberals in “child welfare.” We all need to remember it. This blog post is a reminder. 

In this week’s edition of The Horror Stories Go in All Directions: 

● From KABC-TV, Los Angeles: Another story about the civil lawsuit filed by victims of horrific abuse both in their own home and then in foster care.  They’re suing Riverside County and the private agency that oversaw their foster care.  So let’s remember, if the private agencies get their way, it will be incredibly difficult for such children to sue in the future.  Yet one California news organization after another keeps writing news stories suggesting the real victims are the agencies! 

● From the Honolulu Star-Advertiser: 

The state of Hawaii and Catholic Charities Hawaii have settled a civil lawsuit for $690,000 involving the alleged repeated sexual assault, molestation and abuse of a foster child by the foster mother's son and his friend who both lived with them, plaintiff's lawyers said.