Congratulations Phoenix: When it comes to tearing apart families in big cities, you’re still #1!

 

Bipartisanship in action! In Arizona both parties have failed the state's children

(This post is adapted from NCCPR’s press release to Arizona media.) 

NCCPR has updated its Big CityRate-of-Removal Index, comparing the propensity of America’s ten largest cities and their surrounding counties, to tear apart families. Once again, the champion for big-city family destruction, metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona. 

Children are at greater risk of being torn from everyone they know and love and consigned to the chaos of foster care in Phoenix than in any other of America’s largest cities. It’s a long, ugly tradition. 

Year after year, the Department of Child Safety, Arizona’s family police agency (a more accurate term than ‘child welfare’ agency), cuts a swath of destruction through poor families in Phoenix at a vastly higher rate than any other such agency does in any other of America’s ten largest cities and their surrounding counties. 

And while it’s all done in the name of ‘child safety,’ of course, the DCS take-the-child-and-run mentality makes all children less safe. The mentality was revealed to the nation in 2020 when workers in a DCS office thought it would be a laugh riot to wear matching t-shirts emblazoned with the words ‘Professional Kidnapper.’ The workers were fired, but the data show the mentality remains. 

NCCPR’s Big City Rate-of-Removal Index compares the number of children thrown into foster care to the impoverished child population in America’s ten largest cities and their surrounding counties. Maricopa County (metropolitan Phoenix) is an extreme outlier. Children are taken from their parents in Maricopa County at a rate: 

● 50% percent higher than the second-worst region – Santa Clara County.

● More than 60% higher than the third worst, Los Angeles County.

● Nearly two-and-a-half times the national average for big cities.

● More than triple the rate of New York City.

● Nearly six times the rate of Chicago. 

There is no evidence that Phoenix is a cesspool of depravity with vastly more child abuse than any other big city in America. Rather, this is evidence of a take-the-child-and-run mentality, rooted in racial and class bias, that has plagued child welfare in Arizona for decades. 

The problem is compounded by Arizona’s overreliance on the worst, and most dangerous, form of care – group homes and institutions. Arizona institutionalizes 41% of children entering foster care, a rate more than two-and-a-half times the national average. 

You may be sure that DCS will respond to the facts about its abysmal performance with the Big Lie of American child welfare: the false claim that child removal equals child safety. 

But the Big Lie ignores:

● The mass of research showing that, in typical cases, not the horror stories, children left in their own homes typically fare better even than comparably-maltreated children thrown into foster care. That research includes a stunning recent study showing that, under these circumstances, by age 20, the foster children were more than four times more likely to die.

● The mass of research showing high rates of abuse in foster homes and even higher rates of abuse in group homes and institutions – all those news accounts about the horrors of Arizona group homes and institutions are not aberrations.

● The mass of research showing that poverty is routinely confused with neglect. The research is confirmed by data from Arizona, where, in 87% of cases in which children were thrown into foster care, there was not even an accusation of sexual abuse or any form of physical abuse. In fact, Arizona took away more children because of inadequate housing than for physical and sexual abuse combined. In 62% there was not even an accusation of any form of drug or alcohol abuse – not just no accusation of meth or fentanyl, no accusation of any drug or alcohol abuse of any kind.

All this does enormous harm to the children needlessly taken – and also to those who might be spared foster care but still face the enormous trauma of a child abuse investigation – which involves a traumatic interrogation and, sometimes, a stripsearch. Almost always, this trauma is inflicted as a result of a false report or a poverty case. Nationwide, more than half of all Black children will be forced to endure this trauma at some point in their childhoods. But Arizona is different. In Arizona, it’s two-thirds.

But these aren’t the only children harmed. All the time, money and effort wasted harming children in these cases is, in effect, stolen from finding the relatively few children in real danger. That’s almost always the real reason such children are overlooked, leading to the horror stories that, rightly, make headlines. That’s how the Arizona approach makes all children less safe.

Actions by Gov. Katie Hobbs have compounded the problems. These actions include:

● Giving a giant rate increase to a politically-connected group home operator.

● Giving a giant pay raise to foster parents – and, in effect, making poor people pay for it.

● Taking away support for the least harmful form of foster care, kinship foster care, in which children are placed with extended family.

But the governor’s political opponents have no cause to gloat. In a rare example of bipartisanship, governors and legislators from both parties have been failing Arizona’s vulnerable children for decades, something we documented in a report we released on Arizona child welfare in 2007.

It doesn’t have to be that way. In other states, lawmakers and state leaders have worked across party lines to curb needless removal and make all children safer. In Texas, for example, with strong bipartisan support, lawmakers raised the threshold for coercive intervention into families. In New York and New Jersey, governments bolstered high-quality legal defense for families – not to get “bad parents” off but to craft alternatives to the cookie-cutter ‘service plans’ churned out by agencies like DCS. For more solutions, see NCCPR’s Due Process Agenda and for more examples of strong legislation see the NCCPR Good Bill Bank. Together, these bills and other solutions create a true blueprint for child safety.

They represent ways Arizona could turn its system around and make all children safer. All it needs is the will to finally renounce the take-the-child-and-run mentality that has made all of the state’s children less safe.

Donald Trump and the child savers redux. It’s not a band, but they still sing the same song

 

More than a decade ago, I wrote a column for The Imprint called “Donald Trump and the Child Savers. It’s Not a Band But They Sing the Same Song.” I began it this way: 

Last month, author and political commentator Jeff Greenfield wrote an essay for Politico on the politics of fear – and how Donald Trump exploits it.  He wrote: 

History teaches us lessons of what can happen when genuine public fears are co-opted by the demagogues, fear-mongers and over-reactors. There was a reason to fear crime in the 1960s and 1970s, because violent crime in America was increasing by leaps and bounds, but that didn’t mean the only response [had to be] four decades of over-incarceration, driven by politicians’ fears of looking soft on crime. There was a reason to fear a Soviet espionage network looking for military secrets during a Cold War waged in the shadow of countless nuclear weapons, but that didn’t require McCarthyism as a response. There was a reason to fear where Al Qaeda might strike next after 19 men with box cutters killed 3,000 people in the heart of two great cities, but that didn’t mean we had to invade Iraq. 

Let me add one to Greenfield’s list: There is a reason to fear that a small number of parents are brutally abusive and will do terrible things to innocent children if they are not stopped.  But that doesn’t mean we needed to create a system that puts millions of children through frightening investigations every year, and casts thousands of them into a chaotic system of foster care, traumatizing some of them for life. 

 I was reminded again of how the Trump approach and that of the take-the-child-and-run crowd in child welfare are nearly identical when I read about Trump’s State of the Union address. I spared myself the ordeal of watching it, but you can get an idea of his fixation on exploiting horror stories from this (brief, I promise) excerpt, from Rolling Stone: 

Of course, these horrors have nothing to do with actual rates of crime, nor the actual record of immigrants – who, documented or not, are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans. 

But Trump wants us so upset by the gruesome details of stories that are as rare as they are horrifying that we’ll lose sight of the facts, lose sight of the context and embrace his phony solutions. (And, of course, he argues that anyone who doesn’t embrace his phony solutions doesn’t care if people die gruesome deaths.) 

Now consider the behavior of the child welfare fearmongers in various statehouses, think tanks and college campuses. Have you noticed how often their behavior is identical? Find a gruesome case of fatal child abuse. Imply that it's common. Scapegoat efforts to keep families together – and accuse anyone who disagrees of not caring if children die and/or wanting to ignore fatalities.

And what has it gotten us over the past 50 years or so? Millions of children needlessly torn from everyone they know and love and consigned to the chaos of foster care. A child welfare surveillance state so huge that more than one-third of all children and more than half of Black children will be forced to endure the trauma of a child abuse investigation before they turn 18. And almost always, it will be in response to a false report or a case in which poverty is confused with neglect. 

What it does not get us is an end to the horrific and extremely rare cases that this massive intrusion on families supposedly was going to stop.

On the contrary, the horror stories are needles in a haystack. We’ve spent more than half a century making the haystack bigger, so it’s even harder to find the needles. What should be called the Donald Trump Fearmongering Approach to Child Welfare is making all children less safe. 

Yet all we hear from the fearmongers are cries for more of the same.

But wait, you might say. Don’t you also highlight horror stories? Yes. Often, our weekly news roundup ends with a section called The Horror Stories go in All Directions, followed by one or more examples of terrible things done to children in a foster home, an adoptive home, a group home or an institution. 

The title explains why we do it. Nine years ago, I first offered the other side a mutual moratorium on the use of horror stories. But I’m not going to unilaterally disarm and allow the fearmongers to leave the impression that foster care, adoption, group homes and institutions are free of horrors of their own. 

They haven’t taken me up on the mutual moratorium idea. 

They can’t. Here’s why:

If we stopped pointing out horror stories, here’s what else we would have to make the case for curbing the child welfare surveillance state and ending needless foster care: 

● The mass of research showing that, in typical cases, not the horror stories, children left in their own homes typically fare better even than comparably-maltreated children thrown into foster care. That research includes the stunning study from Sweden showing that, under these circumstances, by age 20, the foster children were more than four times more likely to die.

● The mass of research showing high rates of abuse in foster homes and even higher rates of abuse in group homes and institutions.

● The mass of research showing that poverty is routinely confused with neglect.

● The mass of research showing even small amounts of additional cash can go a long way toward curbing not only what agencies call “neglect” but even cases of serious abuse. 

If the Trump-style fearmongers in “child welfare” had to stop pointing out horror stories to make the case for doing more of what has failed for decades, here’s what else they would have to make their case:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending March 10, 2026

● In Tennessee, the head of the state’s family police agency, which has failed for decades, finally is demanding accountability - from the children!  WTVF-TV in Nashville has a story and I have a blog post, about that atrocious bill in Tennessee that would allow the agency to effectively jail any foster child who gets out-of-line – in order to hold them accountable.

● Oh, and speaking of accountability in Tennessee, who is accountable for the poor results from that $4.2 million no-bid contract to recruit more foster parents, as reported in The Tennessean? 

● In New York, family advocates and family defenders have developed an impressive legislative agenda with enormous potential to make all vulnerable children safer. The New York City Family Policy Project has a comprehensive analysis with links to the vast body of research supporting this agenda. And while the legislative ideas come from New York, most are adaptable to any state. 

● Also in New York, Healthbeat New York reports that the city’s family police agency, the Administration for Children’s Services, has agreed to take $20 million from its budget and turn it over to the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to expand a longstanding voluntary prevention program called the Nurse Family Partnership. But while ACS says that means its hands are off the program, it can’t change the law that makes the nurses mandatory reporters. 

From the story: 

“What they’re doing is buying a doorway for reports,” said Joyce McMillan, founder and executive director of Just Making A Change for Families, a local nonprofit known as JMACforFamilies … “If people are coming in [homes] — because this is for mental health help — they’re going to talk about the things [the parents] struggle with, and then those struggles are going to be turned into cases against the family, separating more kids from their home.” 

● The Imprint adds context to the story of a report that was commissioned, and then suppressed, by Michigan officials concerning the horrors inflicted on Native American children who were institutionalized in so-called “boarding schools” in that state. 

● Children’s Rights has a policy brief on what the Trump Administration is doing to immigrant children, and what can be done about it. It’s available in Spanish and English.    

● In Alaska, which tears apart families at one of the highest rates in the nation, lawmakers are wondering why the reforms they enacted a few years ago aren’t working.  As I write in the Alaska Beacon, it’s because they’re tearing apart families at one of the highest rates in the nation. 

● In Texas, KENS-TV reports, legal aid firms across the state have formed the Family Early Defense Network, with a hotline to provide advice and referrals to lawyers for families facing investigations by the Texas family police. 

● A story in The Imprint about new guidance from the federal Administration for Children and Families is headlined “Feds Warn States: Family Gender Disputes Should Not Lead to Child Welfare Cases.” But is that really what the letter means? As you would expect from the Trump Administration, the letter appears directed at states that interfere when parents reject their children’s choices about their sexual identity. But does that also mean that Texas, for example, has to stop harassing families where parents support their transgender children? 

● There is an interesting nugget in this story from The Imprint about the Georgia Legislature appropriating $81 million to close a gap in the budget of the state’s family police agency: 

The budget document directs the agency to prioritize reunification services, assessments and specialized services. 

NCCPR in the Alaska Beacon: The foster care system is failing Alaska children. So are those trying to fix it.

Last August, the Beacon published a story under the headline “Is Alaska’s foster care system failing children? A federal trial underway now could decide.” 

My answer is: Yes, Alaska’s foster care system is failing children – horrendously. But the current lawsuit won’t fix it. 

Last month, frustrated lawmakers bemoaned the failure of the Office of Children’s Services to implement reforms.

The failure to implement reform and the inevitable failure of the lawsuit have the same fundamental cause. … 

Read the full column in the Alaska Beacon.

Foster care in Tennessee: When the leaders of the “child welfare” agency forgot their disguises

The Tennessee family police agency has a plan for what to do
with foster children who get out of line.

Decades ago, the father of family defense and family advocacy (and also the President of NCCPR), Prof. Martin Guggenheim, cut to the heart of the failure of family policing when he said: “There’s a lot of hate disguised as love in this system.” 

I thought of that when I watched two top “child welfare” officials in Tennessee forget their disguises. I’m not even talking about contempt for parents; they forgot to disguise what they really think of the children – once they get older and are no longer cute little “kiddos.” 

It happened at a legislative hearing in Tennessee concerning a bill supported by the state family police agency, the Department of Children’s Services. The bill would essentially allow DCS to throw foster youth into jail whenever the agency felt they’d gotten out of line - if even threatened to get out of line. 

Oh, wait. I’m sure DCS would want you to know these are not “jails” – rather, they are what news accounts call “jail-like facilities” - detention centers where, under current law, you are not allowed to place a child unless that child is convicted of a crime. But that’s certainly not a jail! 

Tennessee already allows foster youth who committed no crime to be handcuffed. As WTVF-TV in Nashville reports, the cuffs were used on a 12-year-old believed to be autistic, who refused to go to bed. 

But that’s not enough for DCS Legislative Director Jim Layman and DCS Commissioner Margie Quin, who testified in favor of the throw-foster-kids-in-jail bill. 

The leader of the Tennessee "child welfare" agency is demanding
accountability -- from the children. (Still frame from WTVF)

The story was first reported by WPLN Public Radio, then WTVF. They cover much the same ground,  but the video story has one advantage: Even in short soundbites, you can see and practically feel what those DCS officials really think of the children they are supposed to protect.  Watch as Quin says foster youth need to be effectively jailed to be held accountable for “violent” behavior because "that lack of accountability gives rise to additional violent behavior." 

It’s even more striking when the comments of those who would be the victimizers if this bill becomes law are compared to the love and understanding shown by one of those who could have been a victim, former foster youth Ella Bet-Ami.  You can see it all here.

And you can hear WPLN's story here:

 Of course, when foster youth commit violent acts, they already can be criminally charged and placed in “jail-like facilities.” So who does Quin really have in mind? 

Ella Bet-Ami knows what the rhetoric about violent behavior is really all about. Here’s an excerpt from WPLN’s story: 

“We don’t get to make mistakes,” Bet-Ami said. “We don’t get to have temper tantrums. We don’t get to have bad days. We’re not allowed to be children.” … She said that kids like her are living on a knife’s edge — getting into trouble could cost them their home, their foster family, and under a new proposal, their freedom. 

“Foster children are entitled to a childhood in the same way other children are entitled to a childhood,” she said. “It should not be a childhood with the sword of prison dangling over their heads.” 

Don’t believe the usual excuses 

What you heard and saw in these stories is young people like Ms. Bet-Ami described as so incredibly difficult that somehow they’d have to be jailed – and, says Quin, held accountable. Remember that when you hear officials all over the country say that it’s the rest of us who don’t understand when they tell us that the children supposedly are just sooooo much more difficult now, with oh sooooo complex behavioral needs that they simply can’t be placed in a home setting. 

It’s not true of young people like Ms. Bet-Ami. But it’s also not true when it comes to children who really do have serious behavioral problems. Because the research is overwhelming that institutionalization of any kind, let alone a jail, doesn’t work and often does enormous harm. That’s true even when institutions aren’t rife with abuse. But often, of course, abuse is rampant, as with institutions in, among other places, Arizona, Kentucky, Indiana, Utah, Iowa, Oklahoma, Rhode Island,  Washington State, Arkansas, New York, Connecticut, Ohio,  Idaho – and Tennessee. 

In contrast, what has been proven to work is bringing Wraparound programs right into a family home or, when a child really must be removed, into a foster home.  You won’t find many young people more “difficult” than the one the late Karl Dennis, the father of Wraparound, talks about in this video: 

And no, the problem isn’t a “shortage” of foster homes either. Tennessee tears apart families at a rate more than 80% above the national average, even when rates of child poverty are factored in. It's an ugly track record that goes back decades.  Tennessee also already uses so-called "congregate care" - group homes and institutions - at a rate well over double the national average, while using the least harmful form of foster care, kinship foster care, at a rate less than one-third the national average. 

Stop taking away children when parents are guilty of nothing more than, say, driving while Black, as happened in a notorious Tennessee case, spend the money you’re spending on institutionalizing kids on Wraparound services instead, and there will be plenty of good, safe family placements for the children who need them. 

But of course that would require an agency led by people with guts, vision and imagination – or at least an agency led by people who are a bit less hostile toward the kids they’re supposed to be protecting. 

Two footnotes 

1. Tennessee is among the first states to sign on to a new federal child welfare initiative. But I wonder if Gov. Bill Lee and Commissioner Margie Quin need to reread the document. The initiative is called a home for every child, not a cell for every child. 

2. On the matter of accountability. Commissioner Quin: 

● You run a system that tears apart families at a rate more than 80% above the national average.

● You run a system that allows an autistic 12-year-old to be handcuffed for refusing to go to bed.

● You run a system willing to tear apart a family for driving while Black.

● You oversee facilities rife with abuse. 

So by all means, Commissioner Quin. Tell us again why it’s the children who need to be held accountable.

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending March 3, 2026

● America’s leading journalism think tank and training center, the Poynter Institute, published an article on “How to cover child welfare — and not just the system.” Some of the advice on sourcing struck me as particularly insightful :-)

● Prof. Kelley Fong, co-author of the landmark study showing that more foster care does not reduce child abuse deaths, writes in the Sacramento Bee about better ways to keep children safe. 

● Getting placed on a state “central register” of alleged child abusers is incredibly easy – in most states a caseworker just has to check a box on a form. Getting off again is incredibly hard. Most states have an administrative appeals process, but the deck is stacked – impoverished families have no right to a lawyer – and the process can drag on for months, even years. Meanwhile, the poverty that may have been confused with neglect in the first place can deepen, because the listing often bars those listed from many jobs. And, of course, the listing drives up a family’s “risk score,” making it more likely that if there’s another investigation, the children will be needlessly thrown into foster care. The Imprint and  The New York Times have stories on a lawsuit demanding that at least the prolonged delays end in New York State. 

● An Alaska legislator has an idea for an approach to keeping siblings together that, as far as I know, would be unique in the nation. The Alaska Beacon reports on a bill that would change the state’s law concerning termination of children’s rights to their parents (a more accurate term than termination of parental rights) so that children’s rights to their siblings would be maintained.

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending February 24, 2026

● ProPublica has just published a blockbuster story all about how the Trump Administration is trying to weaponize family policing and broad, vague definitions of “neglect” to ratchet up deportations. The Obama and Clinton Administrations are not blameless either. Most importantly, it’s all one more consequence of how the child welfare establishment has spent decades confusing poverty with neglect. 

● A Michigan state agency commissioned a report on the horrors inflicted on Native American children in that state’s so-called “boarding schools” in which native children were incarcerated during the 19^th and 20^th Centuries. One of the Michigan institutions didn’t close until 1983. The 300-page report includes accounts from survivors and descendants of survivors. It recommended an official apology from the state. The report is explosive. How explosive? The first thing the state did was try to cover it up.  Fortunately, the online news site Bridge Michigan obtained a copy. They also have a follow-up story. 

● Family policing continues to traumatize Native children, of course. The Imprint reports on a study of the long-term effects. 

● A hideous bill pushed by the family police agency in Tennessee would let the family police effectively jail any foster youth who gets out of line. Two things are striking in this story about the bill from WPLN public radio: 1. While family police agency leaders often make clear how much they hate the parents, rarely do such leaders give away how much they can’t stand the kids – once they’re no longer cute little “kiddos.” 2. The extraordinary response from former foster youth Ella Bat-Ami: 

“We don’t get to make mistakes,” she said. “We don’t get to have temper tantrums. We don’t get to have bad days. We’re not allowed to be children.” … She said that kids like her are living on a knife’s edge — getting into trouble could cost them their home, their foster family, and under a new proposal, their freedom. 

“Foster children are entitled to a childhood in the same way other children are entitled to a childhood,” she said. “It should not be a childhood with the sword of prison dangling over their heads.” 

● How foster care fails generation after generation, abuse in foster care, and the vital role of housing in keeping families together – or keeping them apart – all are illustrated in this column from The Imprint. Read about what it took to keep this family together, and you may find yourself asking a question I’ve posed before: Why is foster care so easy and everything else so hard? 

● The Imprint reports on a study that finds the rate of non-fatal drug overdoses among foster children is vastly higher than the rate for poor children in general. Intentional overdoses took place more than twice as often as unintentional overdoses. 

The story quotes Dr. Rachel Keefe of Texas Children’s Hospital, who said such a case typically 

“isn’t about chronic substance misuse. It’s about overwhelming feelings — hopelessness, anger, shame, grief — and a young person trying to make the pain stop at that moment,” she said. “When medications are widely available, they are often what gets used.” 

And, of course, since foster youth so often are doped up on psychiatric meds to keep them docile for group home and institution staff, such drugs are more likely to be widely available.

Of course, foster care apologists will rush to claim the disparity is all the fault of the children’s birth parents. But recall the Swedish study, which compared foster youth to comparably-maltreated children left in their own homes. That study found that the foster children were more than four times more likely to be dead by age 20, and the largest single cause was suicide. 

● For this next story, I’ll just let the ironies speak for thesmevles: The adoptive parents promised Jane a forever family when she was eight years old. But, according to KNXV-TV in Phoenix: 

As she grew into a teenager, her increasingly complicated behavioral health needs made it difficult for her to remain safely at home, according to the couple. DCS became involved. Then, according to the [adoptive parents’] lawsuit "While awaiting placement in a behavioral health inpatient facility,” DCS placed Jane in a group home which “was not qualified or equipped to care for her needs.” 

So she ran away, was raped, and suffered “life-altering injuries.” Again, from the story: 

Jane is now 19 years old and living in a home for seriously mentally ill adults. If they prevail in the lawsuit, Jones told ABC15 they will use the money toward the young woman’s care needs. 

“If she doesn't have us, she's not going to make it,” Jones said.

There are three important new resources out this week: 

● The New York City Family Policy Project has a deep dive into the data on allegations of “educational neglect” in New York City. It turns out that, while the investigations inevitably are likely to inflict trauma, they actually find there is nothing wrong 91.5% of the time – which means all that time has been stolen from finding children in real danger. No wonder about half the states wisely do not include missing school as something to be investigated by the family police. See also the story in the New York Times New York Today newsletter. 

● You may recall the excellent story from The Marshall Project on how the family police harass new mothers who test positive for drug use – even when the test is wrong or the drug is medically prescribed. They’ve followed up with a database on how often such cases are referred for criminal prosecution in each state. 

● The Imprint has published its annual survey of foster home capacity. Mostly, it focuses on how many homes and “providers” there are. But there’s also a state-by-state figure for the snapshot number of children in foster care as of about March 31, 2025 – that’s six months more recent than the federal estimate. Notably, it includes figures from some states that claimed to be unable to provide the same data to the federal government. Two notes of caution: 

--The federal government has specific, if insufficiently stringent, criteria for what constitutes a placement in foster care. When states provide data to anyone else, they can use whatever definitions they want. But the Imprint survey data generally track the official figures pretty closely.

 --The so-called “family separation” index is infernally complex, easy to misunderstand and has other limits. I discuss them here.