The committee concludes that yes, New York, your family policing system is racist, and offers ways to fix it.  (And please keep in mind: New York probably is less bad that most states.) The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has advisory committees in every state.  Each year they do a deep dive into a government entity in their state and make recommendations.  In 2022, New York´s committee decided to examine the child welfare system – or as it should be called, the family policing system.  After months of rigorous research and extensive public hearings they released their repo ..read more

● The New York State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has issued its long-awaited report on racism in child welfare. It´s a blockbuster.  And as you read it, keep in mind, New York probably is less bad than most states, ● Minnesota, a state which, year after year, tears apart families at one of the highest rates in the nation, has become the latest state to enact major legislation geared toward curbing that ugly record.  As The Imprint reports, after passing the state House of Representatives unanimously, the governor signed the Minnesota African American Fam ..read more

 ● WNBC-TV is the latest New York media outlet to report on how the city’s family police agency is reneging on a promise to stop swiping foster youth´s Social Security benefits.  And special credit to the Brooklyn Eagle for pointing out in its own story that while the New York City Administration for Children´s Services and General Buck-Passing (well, that should be its name) claims to be hamstrung by federal regulations, other places such as Arizona and Washington, D.C. have found ways to let foster youth keep their own money. ● Across the country, following up on reporting from the ..read more

 Don’t stop me if you’ve heard this one before. There’s a scandal involving horrific abuse at a residential treatment center. No, not the one in Arizona, or the one in Kentucky, or the one in Tennessee, or Indiana, or Utah, or Oklahoma, or Washington state or Arkansas, or Connecticut or — well, you get the idea. This time it’s Rhode Island. But don’t worry. Some Rhode Island lawmakers have come up with the perfect solution: Put locked suggestion boxes in all the group homes and institutions! And that was only the second worst idea to come from legislators or state officials. … Read the fu ..read more

It was 49 years today when a groundbreaking investigative series in the Daily News told a story that had been hidden for a century or more: Cloaked in a veneer of benevolence, New York’s private foster care agencies were deliberately prolonging the time children languished in foster care because their huge, mostly taxpayer-funded budgets were based on payments for each day they kept the children in their “care.” The series also exposed horrific abuse in the group homes, institutions and family foster homes run by these agencies. The six-day series was called “Big Money, Little Victims.” All th ..read more

● This roundup typically features a section on how the horror stories go in all directions.  This week, you can read about horror stories in all directions in this one story from the Indianapolis Star – including comment from NCCPR about why it happens.  ● Hey, remember how New York City´s family police agency told the New York Daily News something like: “Well, golly gee, we’d like to stop swiping foster youth’s Social Security benefits and keeping the money for ourselves, but we just can´t figure out how to do it without losing other funding?”  Well, as the Boston Globe reports ..read more

● Hey, remember when Texas passed laws setting reasonable limits on the vast power of the state’s family police agency, including higher standards before that agency can tear children from everyone they know and love?  Remember how that sparked all that fearmongering about how it would lead to an increase in horrific child abuse?  Remember how that fearmongering was led by groups like Texas CASA (which presumably wants to distract everyone from the huge study showing that their program is a failure)? Remember how their media allies at the Dallas Morning News and the Texas Tribune bou ..read more

The Arizona Legislature has, in effect, put the Department of Child Safety on probation, allowing it to continue to function for another four years instead of the customary eight  The decision is a healthy recognition that DCS, both in its current form and when it was a division of the Department of Economic Security, often does enormous harm to the children it is meant to help.  But recognition is just step one. Lawmakers need to understand what created this mess and how to fix it.  The root of the problem is a fanatical drive to tear apart families that has plagued the state f ..read more

The Kentucky Derby isn’t run until May 4.  But when it comes to the Kentucky Irony derby, we already have a winner!  WDRB-TV in Louisville has a story with this headline: “Norton Children's opens new center combatting child abuse at the Home of the Innocents.”  For a split second, I thought: Wow! They’re putting in monitors to stop the child abuse at Home of the Innocents – abuse exposed in this story from the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting.  No such luck.  The new center is just another “counseling” and “parent education” program.  But hey, when ..read more

“We don’t have enough money to stop being racist!” Well, no, county family police agencies in Minnesota (where counties run these systems) didn’t say it in those words.  But in this excellent story from Minnesota Public Radio that’s essentially the argument put forth by county family policing agencies opposing a new version of the Minnesota African American Family Preservation Act.  That is just more b.s.  Just as Minnesota takes away children at a rate nearly double the national average, Minnesota spends on child welfare at a rate even more than double the national average. And ..read more