NCCPR News and commentary round-up, week ending Jan 14, 2024

● A story I missed from late last year: The Maine Morning Star reports on how, as the headline says, “Maine’s definition of neglect is ‘easy to conflate with poverty’”  Citing two Maine family defense attorneys, the story concludes: 

Kilgore said she has families on the verge of reunification, but who are delayed because they are trying to find the money for a security deposit. Housing can be “terrifying” for a family, Richter said, given the state’s lack of affordable units and how losing housing can trigger child protective services’ involvement. 

And that’s just one example. If the family with the broken car were given funds to pay the mechanic, that sort of assistance could help circumvent an investigation and perhaps keep a family together. 

● The problem is compounded by the foster-care panic that has engulfed the state. The panic has been fueled in part by local advocates and reporters misreading an annual federal report on child abuse.  I have a commentary in the Morning Star about what that report means, and what it does not.  (It applies to every other state as well). 

● Meanwhile, the Maine Child Welfare Action Network has an op-ed in the Kennebec Journal  that reads in part: 

Maine’s current definition of child abuse and neglect is vague, conflates neglect with poverty and does not provide sufficient guidance for the long list of professionals who are required to report suspected abuse and neglect. This, along with heightened awareness and fear due to highly publicized child deaths, has led to a harmful strain on our child protection agency. Families are overreported, and most reports are not appropriate for investigation. Families that are reported unnecessarily often don’t receive the services they may need and experience further mistrust of a system with the power to take their children away. This makes it less likely parents will seek help when they need it. 

Flooding our child protection agency with unnecessary reports stretches the system’s capacity, making it less able to effectively intervene when children are truly unsafe. 

That’s all very nice (and entirely correct) but it would be more credible if the Maine Child Welfare Action Network apologized for the fact that its own parent agency, the Maine Children’s Alliance, was among those most responsible for spreading the dangerous misinformation I discuss in my op-ed.  Last year, they poured gasoline on the fires of foster-care panic. Applying a little water now doesn’t make up for it. 

● Child abuse pediatrician Barbara Knox left Wisconsin after her behavior was called into question by Wisconsin Watch.  She moved to Alaska, where her behavior was called into question by the Anchorage Daily News.  Now she’s at the University of Florida – where her behavior has been called into question by the university’s independent student newspaper, The Allegator.  Their story has something new: Allegations of racial bias.  From the story: 

Knox has also commented on employees’ skin color. The second CPT employee, who is mixed race, said Knox once asked her, “Why are you getting so dark?” 

According to the first [child protection team] employee, Knox complained that the receptionist for CPT’s Tallahassee office, a Black woman, looked “ghetto” due to having long, decorated fingernails.  In her account, Knox also wanted a case built against the Tallahassee receptionist and described her as “lazy” and someone who “looks like one of our clientele.” … 

Knox would treat families of color differently than white families, according to all three employees.  “We have African American, Hispanic, Muslim families that come in, and… she will go ahead and verify a report against them [over the smallest of issues], say it’s child abuse, and put the family in terrible, terrible situations,” one employee said. 

When the child of a white doctor arrived to the clinic with gonorrhea — which is highly indicative of sexual abuse — Knox decided not to verify the case and claimed the child contracted gonorrhea from unwashed hands, the employee said. 

● In Tennessee, WZTV reports, a former caseworker is speaking out about the contempt some of her colleagues display toward the children they supposedly are rescuing. 

Events: 

On Jan. 22, Melody Webb, founder and executive director of the Mothers Outreach Network will discuss MON’s Mother-Up program providing cash assistance to families at risk of having their poverty confused with “neglect.”  The webinar is sponsored by the American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law.  You can register here. 

And finally … 

● According to this New York Times Story: 

Hundreds of thousands of Tibetan children are being separated from their families and placed in boarding schools by the Chinese government. They are being educated mostly in Mandarin and indoctrinated with official Chinese values of loyalty and patriotism. For China’s leader, Xi Jinping, the boarding schools are crucial to absorbing Tibetans into a nation united around the Communist Party. Our reporting shows that far from home, the children are at risk of abuse, and of being stripped of their Tibetan identity and bonds with family. 

Gee; I wonder where China got that idea?