NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending February 26, 2025

Before the news: A big virtual event next week. You can register here to learn about “The Protective Power of Cash” at a virtual teach-in March 3 from 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm ET. 

In the news: 

● There’s a new issue of the Family Justice Journal out – filled with articles about “The Practice of Connection.” I particularly want to call attention to the Foreword on Page 8. It’s by Sandy Santana, executive director of Children’s Rights.  This remarkable essay makes clear that CR is backing up its recent change in rhetoric with action. I have a blog post about the transformation. 

Other articles in Family Justice Journal include: 

● Joyce McMillan introduces JMAC for Families’ curriculum to teach mandated reporters how to be mandated supporters. There’s more about it here. 

● In an article about “The False Gods of Social Change” Kevin Campbell, Cormac Russell and Elizabeth Wendell write: 

In practice, “service users” receiving aid from the government and charities exchange freedoms of self-determination, choice, participation, and control for the promise of subsistence, not equity, health, or even dignity. No freedom is considered too precious to take from a “service user” by a social, health, mental health, or justice system. The reality is people lose their

children, reproductive autonomy, sovereign claims to identity, personal liberty, associations, and even freedoms of movement in return for “services” to meet their “needs.”

In other news:

● When some Maine lawmakers recently learned that their mandatory child abuse reporting law has a clause that, under some circumstances, prohibits doctors from thinking, they were outraged – not because such an idiotic law exists but because, in their view, it is not being sufficiently enforced. I have a blog post about it. 

● In the United States there’s been a lot more talk lately about child welfare’s history of trying to eradicate Native America.  The talk has helped.  But in Canada, government is putting some money where its mouth is.  The Imprint reports that for First Nations Canadians: 

Those taken as children between 1991 and 2022 from “reserves” and the northwestern territory of Yukon are eligible to submit claims, as are their caregiving parents and grandparents. [Emphasis added, in case anyone thinks these are just crimes of the distant past.] … 

“While no amount of money can make up for the harms done by Canada’s racist child welfare system, March 10 will be a historic turning point to address these past wrongs,” National Chief Woodhouse Nepinak stated. “The $23 billion compensation settlement is an important recognition of the heroic representative plaintiffs and everyone who took part in the long process of negotiations that brought us to this point.” … 

Yet as the claims process moves forward, a far larger and more systemic reform sought on behalf of Indigenous children and families remains stalled. 

● And in Montana, The Daily Montanan reports that a bill to make permanent that state’s own version of the Indian Child Welfare Act, which its sponsor says is stronger than the federal law, has received preliminary approval by the State Senate. 

● Writing in CTMirror, a bioethicist, an adoptee rights advocate and a pediatrician make the case against so-called “baby boxes” where mothers can abandon their infants. They write: 

There is a misperception that these mothers do not wish to be with their children – and only need a box to “drop them off.” However nearly all women who surrender a child want to keep them, yet feel they may have no other option. Relinquishment is associated with unrelenting grief – and finances are the main reason relinquishment in 80% of the cases within the U.S. Even enough money to cover the cost of a car seat can make the difference for some families so they could keep their child. 

They also note serious problems with the safety of baby boxes, and they offer an intriguing alternative.

● Maryland is among the states considering enacting a “Family Miranda” law. Such laws do not give families any additional rights – they just inform them of the rights they already have. So you can see why family policing agencies don’t like them. The Maryland law was the subject of a remarkable hearing last week.  I have a blog post with a link to the full hearing, and a reprint of the testimony of Prof. Shanta Trivedi of the University of Baltimore. 

● On LinkedIn Pulse Melody Webb of Mother’s Outreach Network writes about the changes urgently needed in Washington DC’s family policing system.  DC is one of the places where families are not even guaranteed a lawyer when up against the family police.

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

● I’m thinking the headline on this Wichita Eagle story is enough: 

‘Please do not make us get in the boxes’: Court doc details death of adopted girl buried in Rose Hill.