NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending August 18, 2026

● It was bound to happen eventually: Sooner or later, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver would take on some of the enormous harm done by family policing. In Sunday’s program, they took on the enormous damage done by the way many state laws and family police agencies deal with substance use by pregnant women. The part about “child welfare” begins at 8:25 in. 

One footnote: Because the segment was built around so-called “fetal personhood” laws, the examples came from red states. But you don’t need such a statute to persecute pregnant women and do enormous harm to their newborns. One of the worst offenders is deep blue Vermont. 

● I really hope they were watching in New Mexico, where they are at peak foster-care panic in part because the Governor herself has screwed up on this issue, imposing a child-confiscation-at- birth policy whenever a newborn or the child’s mother tests positive for certain substances. Reason reports on the harm similar policies are causing nationwide.

● And the Santa Fe New Mexican reports on a tragedy from years ago that, thanks in part to the Governor’s policy, is even more likely to happen in that state today: 

The New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department paid $1.4 million to settle a lawsuit in which the agency was accused of placing two young siblings with a family where the children were starved, beaten and one was sexually abused. … The children … suffered abuse over a number of years while staying with the Taos family, and CYFD failed to substantiate allegations of abuse against the family and signed off on the children’s adoption, leading to more abuse, the original civil complaint filed in the lawsuit alleges. 

The boy later said he was being starved by his adoptive parents, who were “only giving him one hot dog at noon and one hot dog for dinner,” and would withhold food from him for bad behavior, the lawsuit states. At the time, he hadn’t eaten in two days. 

The boy was also not allowed to leave his room to go to the restroom and was forced to relieve himself in his room. He also reported being brutally abused, including by beatings from older children in the home on the orders of his adoptive parents, the lawsuit states. His sibling, meanwhile, was being physically and sexually abused, it adds. 

Much of this happened ten years ago. But thanks to everyone from the governor to the state attorney general to their allies in advocacy and media, something like this is even more likely to happen today. Here’s why. 

● But, Boston Medical Center reports that, when it comes to substance use, Massachusetts is moving in the opposite direction – and, according to a new study, it’s working – cutting reports to the family police in half with no compromise of safety. From BMC’s press release: 

"As clinicians, we have long recognized that reflexive reporting feels punitive and rarely serves children's or families' best interests. This study helps establish that alternative, discretionary approaches are feasible and that clinical teams can appropriately identify infant safety concerns after birth," said Heather Hsu, MD, MPH, senior author of the study and a pediatric hospitalist at BMC.

"We hope this research encourages hospitals and policymakers across the country to consider what a more compassionate, evidence-based standard of care could mean for families everywhere." 

● New Mexico isn’t the only state where children are paying the price of foster-care panic. The Missouri Independent reports in this story that the number of children trapped in Missouri foster care soared by more than 14% over the past 16 months - in other words, since Sara Smith started running the state’s family police agency, the Children’s Division, bringing her take-the-child-and-run fanaticism to the job. 

The Independent reports that Smith has abolished team decision-making meetings that used to take place before children were removed. And she’s effectively demanded more adherence to a biased “risk assessment” form that includes a classic self-fulfilling prophecy: Any past contact with the Children’s Division, even if the family is innocent, is among the factors that raise the score. (That’s great news for anyone who wants to harass someone with repeated false reports, by the way.) 

Indeed, what may seem like neutral bureaucratic changes often reflect Smith’s take-the-child-and-run agenda: Almost all are geared to making foster care the easier answer for overwhelmed caseworkers, while making anything else harder. 

Oh, and in addition to the enormous harm she’s doing to children in individual cases, she’s plunged her entire agency into chaos. 

● The next item this week doesn’t mention child protective services at all. It doesn’t say a word about foster care. That’s the point. It’s a column by Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times. He tells the story of a high school teacher who had a student who was falling asleep in class. She found out why her student was falling asleep. She also found out the student was hungry. But she didn’t make everything worse by making the knee-jerk call to the family police. What she did instead is a perfect example of what it means to be, in Joyce McMillan’s words, a mandatory supporter instead of a mandatory reporter. 

● Gene Weingarten has an update to his column about a mother jailed and awaiting trial on second-degree murder charges after she forgot that she’d left her child in a hot car. Here’s his first column about the case. Such charges are, of course, more likely to be brought if the parent is nonwhite. And, as Weingarten points out, for the surviving children, there is an extra element of cruelty here: 

Deja Coleman’s oldest son, Dinero, is profoundly autistic. He articulates mostly in unintelligible sounds. In asking the court to grant Coleman’s release on bond, Ford argued that her continued incarceration was an unconscionable added cruelty to a vulnerable innocent: 

“The only person on the planet that her nonverbal six year old son can communicate with is her.” 

● Yes, again: Another exposé of another institution rife with abuse, where the instructions from the top allegedly were to cover it up and delay seeking outside help. This time the story is from WPLN Public Radio in Tennessee and ProPublica. This time, it’s a juvenile justice institution. But remember, this is Tennessee, where the family police agency wanted a change in law to allow them to throw in jail any foster child who they felt was getting out of line, or even threatening to get out of line.  

● Also yet again: Still another study documenting how providing concrete help reduces not only what agencies call neglect but physical abuse as well.

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending August 12, 2026

● The Marshall Project and CBS News Sunday Morning produced a stunning in-depth report on how the family police persecute pregnant women if their newborns allegedly test positive for even trace amounts of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. Was the child unharmed? It doesn’t matter. Was the marijuana prescribed by a doctor? It doesn’t matter. The vengeance of the system takes precedence over anything, including the harm to children whose parents can’t make a living because they’re on a “central registry” or the newborns separated from their mothers at birth while the mothers who can’t make bail are thrown into jail. You can watch the story here or below and read the Marshall Project series here. 

See also this CBS News Sunday Morning interview with Dr. Stephen Patrick, a doctor in neonatal ICUs and a researcher on how the opioid crisis affects pregnant women and infants. Dr. Patrick … 

… talks with CBS News' Erin Moriarty about what happens after a mother tests positive for a substance during pregnancy. Patrick argues that automatically referring mothers to child welfare or law enforcement over a single drug test - even for substances like marijuana, which are legal in much of the country - can create more harm than it prevents: driving women away from prenatal care, disproportionately affecting Black and Native American families, and separating moms from newborns without evidence of harm. 

● For years, New York City’s family police agency claimed its use of “predictive analytics” – or, as it should be called, computerized racial profiling - was confined to one itty bitty algorithm far from affecting frontline practice decisions. If that ever was true, it sure isn’t now.  Defector has just exposed the full extent of the profiling. It’s the kind of scheme the Trump Administration wants to see come to your state, too. 

● Seventeen years ago, Gene Weingarten, then a reporter and editor for The Washington Post, won a Pulitzer Prize for a story about children who die when their parents forget they’ve left them in hot cars. Now, on his Substack, he reports on another case, from Georgia.  

Among many other points, Weingarten notes that “statistically, prosecutors are significantly more likely to seek criminal penalties in these cases when the defendant is dark-skinned.” Indeed, the one study I know of concerning the issue, which used occupation as a surrogate measure for race and class found: 

One particularly important and disturbing finding was the disparate treatment of parents from different socioeconomic groups. Parents working in blue-collar professions or who were unemployed were four times more likely to be prosecuted than parents from wealthier socioeconomic groups. 

As you read Weingarten’s story, please be sure to compare how this mother is being treated to the treatment afforded this Georgia father, who, unambiguously, was at fault in endangering his children.  

And consider as well: while the authorities gleefully take their swing at the mother, the blow is landing hardest on the surviving children. Her network of friends has rallied around to cushion the blow as much as possible, but they are still suffering because of this separation, suffering that may well endure even if the family is reunited. 

That cruelty is brought home in an update Weingarten posted today (Aug. 12) which concludes this way:

Deja Coleman’s oldest son, Dinero, is profoundly autistic. He articulates mostly in unintelligible sounds. 

In asking the court to grant Coleman’s release on bond, Ford argued that her continued incarceration was an unconscionable added cruelty to a vulnerable innocent: 

“The only person on the planet that her nonverbal six year old son can communicate with is her.”

● A case from Georgia also is the focus of this excellent New York Times story about families harassed by the family police for allowing their children to exercise reasonable childhood independence – and the laws some states have passed to try to put a stop to such harassment. 

● In the years since the federal Indian Child Welfare Act became law, 17 states have strengthened protection for Native American children by passing their own versions of ICWA. Now, The Imprint reports, a nonprofit known as the Uniform Law Commission has drafted a model law for the remaining states to consider. From the story: 

If enacted by state legislatures, the proposed rules would strengthen requirements that social workers make “active efforts” to prevent family separation, such as prioritizing tribal kin for out-of-home placements and providing Indigenous parents more opportunities to reunite with children before their parental rights are terminated. It would also ensure that parental abuse or neglect findings are not solely based on “community or family poverty.” 

… [T]he model law, the uniform state ICWA proposal is more expansive and detailed than the federal law. It offers clearer guidance on cultural competency, including addressing language barriers in child welfare proceedings. It also clarifies that tribal law should carry the same weight as state law. 

● And there’s this, from Medscape: 

Children with complex chronic conditions are disproportionately represented in the child welfare system and their caregivers are significantly more likely to be investigated for medical neglect, according to a new analysis published in Pediatrics.

The findings underscore the need for primary care clinicians to distinguish between caregivers who are unwilling to provide necessary medical care to their children or are unable because of transportation, finances, and inadequate social support, and to exhaust efforts to aid caregivers in fulfilling those needs before reporting. 

In this week’s reminder that the horror stories go in all directions 

● From NewsNation An example of the horrors going in all directions for the same children: 

Julissa Turpin thought that she was safe after being rescued in 2018 from the California “house of horrors” she shared with 12 siblings and their abusive parents, Louise and David Turpin. 

With Louise and David behind bars, Julissa and several of her siblings rejoiced in their freedom and looked forward to moving into a foster home. Caseworkers assured them they’d be safe, and they believed it. “I was so vulnerable and (it was) easy to believe anything that people were telling me,” Julissa Turpin, 20, tells NewsNation. 

But she ended up being re-abused in the foster home where she and several of her siblings were sent. ...

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending August 4, 2026

● Even if you think you know all about the horrors of “residential treatment,” this story from The Marshall Project still shocks. From the story: 

Both teens said they dreamed of escaping the staff members who forcibly held them down hard enough to leave bruises, the blood in the hallways from kids cutting themselves, the girls strangling themselves with bedsheets, the adults who insisted no family wanted to adopt them and who looked through them like they were already gone. … 

Recalling when she was held down by Fox Run workers, Isabella said, “[My skin] was purple. And I could get gasps of air out, saying I could not breathe.” Memories of the younger children at Fox Run, ages 5 to 6, who were held in what she said was called the “Dreams Unit,” still haunt her. 

“Grown men would throw them like ragdolls,” she said of the children. “They’re just so little. They’re scared.” 

See also the sidebar in which The Marshall Project explains to former residents of these places (inmates would be a better term) how to get their own records. 

Now, consider what The Marshall Project found in light of another story: 

● The Imprint reports on the first attempt to add up how many children each state dumps into hotel rooms, offices and other makeshift placements. Two items stand out: 

1. Massachusetts said it never did this during the time under investigation – but local investigative reporting says otherwise. Did the state family police agency lie? 

2. #1 in the nation for doing this to children is Arizona. But Greg McKay, the former head of the Arizona family police agency – along with the rest of the usual take-the-child-and-run-foster-care-at-all-costs fanatics -- says the solution is to build more residential treatment centers! – you know, like the one described in that story from The Marshall Project. Or how about in this story from KNXV-TV Phoenix – the latest in a long line of stories about abuse in Arizona group homes and institutions. This in a state that already institutionalizes children at a rate quadruple the national average. 

● While in Virginia, WTVR-TV reports, this happened: 

Children are being transferred out of a psychiatric residential treatment facility — some returning home — after state regulators stepped in and ordered a sweeping safety overhaul at Hallmark Youthcare in Goochland County. … DBHDS previously said it was investigating Hallmark after more than a dozen juveniles ran away from the facility over two days in July. [Emphasis added.] 

But sure, classic child welfare establishment thinking says: “Let’s solve the problem of warshousing children in offices by warehousing them in RTC’s!” 

● We broke some news on this Blog this week – but it’s awful news. In New Mexico, the number of children torn from those they know and love and consigned to the chaos of foster care during the second three months of 2026 skyrocketed by nearly 80% over the same period the year before. If that continues, New Mexico may break the record for the worst statewide foster-care panic anywhere in America since 1999. 

● One contributor to the panic is a child-confiscation-at-birth policy, in which newborns born “exposed” to certain substances are automatically taken away instantly and held for at least 72 hours and often far longer. A prominent proponent of the policy loves to claim that, since it took effect, no child has died (a claim that is, at best, incomplete). And, she says, “there is no other metric that matters.” Which raises a question: How would those touting this as the only metric feel if the New Mexico family police agency used it as grounds to take away their children? I have a blog post about it. 

● The foster-care panic also makes it more likely children will be dumped into shelters and other makeshift placements. So, did the New Mexico foster-care panic contribute to what happened to the child at the center of this story? Oh, but I forgot. She allegedly was repeatedly sexually abused, but she didn’t die. So does her suffering even matter? 

● Last week, I noted that The Washington Post has done a lot to advance the story of the trauma inflicted on Pete Buttigieg’s family as a result of a malicious false report of child abuse. So of course, this week I have a blog post about the key lessons. 

● Fort Worth Report has a story about a promising approach to keeping families together. It’s a program similar to Intensive Family Preservation Services, a highly effective evidence-based practice that many in the child welfare establishment hate.  If you want to know why they hate it so, consider this excerpt from the story about the Fort Worth-area variation called Intercept: 

“There’s been times I’m washing dishes with the parent and we’re going over strategies for de-escalation or co-regulation.” 

The worst of the worst in child welfare are the ones who sniff: “I didn’t get a social work degree to help someone do the dishes!” The best of the best are the ones who say: “You do whatever it takes.” 

● WGBH has another story on the likely closing of the nation’s only federally-funded research center for parents with disabilities (because the Trump Administration obviously doesn’t want anyone to know what such families endure and certainly doesn’t want them to get any help). As a member of the center’s advisory board put it: 

“As a Black father with a disability, the history of just being able to have a family has always been one not necessarily possible. We’ve never had a moment to exist without the government specifically targeting the ability to even be a parent.” 

● April Miller spent years in foster care herself, then, as an adult, stepped up to take care of a cousin. But though kinship care is, by far, the least harmful form of foster care, kinship foster parents typically get far less help than those providing what should be called “stranger care.” As Miller writes in The Imprint: 

Kinship care is not a lesser form of care. It is foster care without the safety net. It is permanency without preparation. It is crisis response without compensation. And it is time we stop pretending that gratitude is an adequate substitute for support. 

Which, in a way, brings us back to Arizona, where the state cut aid to kinship foster parents, while lavishing giant rate increases on group homes and a giant pay raise on stranger-care parents. 

● And finally: In Kentucky, a toddler suffered horrible burns when he pulled down a crockpot in the family home. Here’s what happened next – or rather, what didn’t happen: No one has placed a “hold” on the child in the hospital, while child protective services investigates. In fact, CPS doesn’t seem to have even shown up. 

The family has been treated humanely, with the understanding that sometimes terrible accidents happen. In fact, according to this story from WKYT-TV, “if there is a silver lining in the whole ordeal, it’s been the way the community has shown its support for [the child], his parents, and the family.” 

 Why such understanding? Take a look at the video and you’ll have no trouble figuring it out.

New Mexico gets its foster-care panic

The number of children torn from their families so far in 2026 soars 40% over 2025. In the second quarter, the increase is nearly 80%

Congratulations, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez and your take-the-child-and-run allies: You got your foster care panic. 

With everyone from the Governor to the Attorney General to the usual take-the-child-and-run extremists attacking efforts to keep families together, New Mexico has just what they apparently want: a foster-care panic sweeping vast numbers of additional children away from everyone they know and love and into the chaos of New Mexico foster care. 

Data just released by the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department and being reported here for the first time show that the number of children torn from their homes during the first half of 2026 soared 40% over the same period in 2025. (To see the data, click on “removals” in the left-hand column.) And the panic seems to be accelerating. When you look only at the second quarter of 2026, CYFD caseworkers stormed into homes (or sometimes hospital rooms) and walked out with the children at a rate nearly 80% above the rate during the same period in 2025.

 

 The second quarter of 2026 coincides with the release of a highly publicized report by Torrez in which he used Trump-style tactics to falsely scapegoat family preservation for the very real failings of CYFD. There was a similar spike in child removal in the third quarter of 2025 – when the governor announced her child-confiscation-at-birth policy for newborns exposed to certain drugs. 

Just yesterday, a news account revealed one of those who may have been a victim of this take-the-child-and-run mentality: a 13-year-old girl allegedly sexually abused repeatedly while parked in a “shelter” known as New Day. According to a lawsuit filed on behalf of the child, not only did the shelter do nothing to help the child, they tried to cover up the abuse. 

If that’s what happened, then rather than being kept safe by the take-the-child-and-run mentality, she paid the price of New Mexico’s foster care panic. Because even if this particular child really needed to be taken from her home (and we don’t know that), the place in a good, safe foster home that should have been hers was taken by someone else, someone who didn’t need to be taken, someone who may have been taken because family poverty was confused with neglect, or someone taken for some other reason – but a problem that could have been solved without resorting to the trauma of foster care placement. 

The extent of the harm 

She is not alone. Because here is what we know about foster care and foster care panics: 

● We know there is abuse in one-quarter to one-third of family foster homes, and the rate of abuse in group homes and institutions is worse. 

● We know that the inherent trauma of foster care is so great that study after study finds that children left in their own homes typically fare better in later life even than comparably maltreated children placed in foster care. That’s because the typical cases are nothing like the horror stories in which advocates like Torrez revel. They exploit these tragedies the way Donald Trump exploits horror stories about immigrants, leaving a gross misimpression of who is in the system and why. 

● We know that the harm is so great, the trauma so inherent, that one study found that by age 20, children placed in foster care are four times more likely to die than comparably-maltreated children left in their own homes. 

● All this trauma is so great that now it’s even possible to estimate how many more children will die because they were placed in foster care. So when, in speaking of the governor’s child-confiscation-at-birth policy, another New Mexico take-the-child-and-run advocate says no child has died and “there is no other metric that matters” – keep in mind: She should have said: No child has died yet. And if you say no other metric matters, does that mean what was allegedly done to that 13-year-old in the shelter, and all the other children harmed by foster care, doesn’t matter? 

A foster-care panic makes it all worse 

A foster-care panic worsens all of it: It increases the temptation to lower standards for foster parents and look the other way when there is abuse in group homes, shelters and institutions. 

The lawsuit against New Day alleges that “management’s initial reaction was fear that New Day would be shut down if the public learned what had happened.” But they probably have nothing to worry about. In a foster-care panic, agencies like CYFD are begging for beds, and beggars can’t be choosers. 

A foster-care panic also further overloads workers, leaving them less time to find those few cases of children in real danger for whom foster care really is the only safe option. 

So congratulations, Governor Grisham. Congratulations, Attorney General Torrez. Congratulations, take-the-child-and-run advocates. And Congratulations to all who have cheered them on. All of you almost certainly had the best of intentions. I assume you really thought this was the best way to protect children. But instead, you have managed to make all the vulnerable children of New Mexico less safe.

Three million children endure the trauma of a child abuse investigation every year, almost always because of a false report. Now we know more about how the children of Pete Buttigieg became two of them.

Pete Buttigieg (Photo by Gage Skidmore)

TheWashington Post has done excellent work advancing the story of the malicious, false allegation of child abuse against Pete Buttigieg. A few points stand out: 

● What the Attorney General doesn’t seem to know 

The story notes that the Michigan Attorney General’s office is investigating the handling of the false allegation against the family – in other words, they’re investigating the investigation. That’s because, a spokesperson says, “Common sense would have shown that this targeted report plainly lacked credibility on its face. Before children are separated from their families, due diligence should be exercised to ensure some nexus exists between the source and the family, or that the complaint comes from a reputable, reliable, or verifiable source.” 

There’s just one problem. Michigan law prohibits the exercise of common sense. If an allegation even “minimally” meets the definition of child abuse or neglect in state law, it must be investigated. It doesn’t matter if there isn’t “some nexus … between the source and the family.” It doesn’t matter if the complaint doesn’t come “from a reputable, reliable, or verifiable source.” 

That is not unusual. It’s one reason that of the two million reports alleging child abuse that are investigated each year, more than 80% turn out to be false reports. That’s true even though in most states a report is “substantiated” if a caseworker simply checks a box on a form guessing that it is at least slightly more likely than not that the abuse or neglect occurred.  Among “substantiated” reports, the overwhelming majority allege neglect – which, of course, often means poverty. 

Because screening for credibility is not allowed, and for many other reasons, the process about which the Attorney General now claims to be upset - the process the Post story aptly describes as stemming from “a vague and unsubstantiated allegation …” is not unusual. It is the norm. 

It happens to nearly three million children every year, more than 145,000 in Michigan alone. That’s an average of more than 8,000 children’s families investigated nationwide every day. But those families are overwhelmingly poor and disproportionately nonwhite.  In fact, by the time they turn 18, more than one-third of all children and more than half of all Black children will endure what the Buttigieg children endured – and for many, if not most, it will be far worse. 

The only thing unusual about the Buttigieg case is that the children victimized by the police and by what should be called the family police were the children of a prominent public figure. 

● The only families the attorney general seems to care about are celebrities 

Although those most often affected almost always are unknown, almost always are poor and are disproportionately nonwhite, the Attorney General seems to have no interest in them. 

According to the Post story, the goal of the Attorney General’s office is to 

reduce the risk of false allegations of child abuse “against other well-known residents and elected officials as the newest form of threat or intimidation,” the spokesperson said. 

The rest of you – the other 397 children whose families are investigated on an average day in Michigan based on reports that are overwhelmingly false, don’t seem to count for much. 

● To make everything worse, just add Indiana 

When I first read about what happened to the Buttigieg children, I thought to myself: At least they don’t still live in Indiana. Because while the Michigan system is bad, the Indiana system is among the nation’s worst – investigating families and tearing them apart with a hair trigger. Details are here. 

But it turns out Indiana’s police and child welfare agency were involved – and, sure enough, they managed to make things worse. For starters … 

● It wasn’t an anonymous report after all – well, not at first 

(A note about the appearance of “appears": Though the Post has done superb work trying to trace how all this came about, because of the number of agencies involved and their ability to keep so much secret, some things remain uncertain – hence the frequent appearance of the word “appears” in this section.)

Up to now, everyone, myself included, has been writing that the initial call accusing  Buttigieg was anonymous. Apparently not. It appears that the first place the caller phoned was Indiana’s child welfare agency (or as it should be called, the family police agency), the Department of Child Services.  At that point, it appears, she did indeed identify herself. The Post even was able to track her down. 

It further appears that, as in Michigan, hotline screeners in Indiana are not allowed to screen out a 
report based on the credibility of the reporter. If the allegations meet the statutory definition of abuse and neglect, and if there’s enough information to find the family, it must be screened in. 

We don’t know how Indiana police got involved, but odds are it's because the allegations were heinous and lurid – involving allegations so severe that regulations may advise or even require law enforcement involvement. 

It appears that both Indiana DCS and Indiana police passed on the information to their Michigan counterparts, who then rushed to the Buttigieg home. None of these four agencies did any checking beforehand. In the case of the CPS agencies, they probably were not allowed to, and the police likely followed their leads. But that doesn’t explain why it was days before anyone from Michigan even bothered to try to get more information from Indiana. 

● How did it become an anonymous report? 

In Indiana, according to DCS, “State law requires DCS to protect the identity of those reporting abuse or neglect allegations. DCS keeps the name and contact information of all report sources confidential.” 

According to the Post: 

Ron Green, a spokesperson for the Indiana Department of Child Services, said the agency followed “established procedures,” including not sharing information about callers. After this article first published, Green said the agency’s policy does allow for caller information to be shared with other child welfare agencies and law enforcement. [Emphasis added.] 

So why didn’t that happen? 

If the agency’s own flack could make that mistake in a newspaper interview, is it possible that whoever sent the report from Indiana to Michigan made the same mistake? 

What is clear is that none of these four agencies seemed to have much interest in tracking down the reporter or checking her credibility. It’s one more indication of the extent to which these agencies are inured to the harm their investigations do to the children they’re supposedly protecting and to their families, and the extent to which they treat those families with contempt. 

Except now, maybe, when they’re famous.

Child welfare in New Mexico: Which metrics matter when it’s YOUR child?

 

New Mexico has a child-confiscation-at-birth policy, in which newborns who test positive for certain substances are automatically taken away instantly and held for at least 72 hours and often far longer. A prominent proponent of the policy loves to claim that, since it took effect, no child has died. And, she says, “there is no other metric that matters.” 

The first thing to know about the claim is that it needs a huge qualifier: No child has died yet. Because the research is overwhelming that, between the high rates of abuse in foster care and the emotional trauma that will lead to all sorts of rotten outcomes, in typical cases placement in foster care actually increases the odds that a child will die.  It’s even possible to calculate the odds. It won’t necessarily be right away; it may be years from now. That will make it easy for those advocating for policies like confiscation-at-birth to avoid accountability. But it won’t make the children any less dead. 

And yet some New Mexico media love that “only metric that matters” line. But then, journalists in New Mexico, like everywhere else, are overwhelmingly middle-class and disproportionately white. That makes them largely immune from intervention by agencies that should be called the family police. 

But what if that were not the case? Suppose, hypothetically, you’re a New Mexico journalist, or lawmaker, or other prominent public figure and you’ve found yourself in the position of, say, Pete Buttigieg. Suppose someone who didn’t like one of your bills, or one of your stories, decided to file a false, malicious child abuse report accusing you of the most vile crimes against children. And now, suppose New Mexico had an analogous policy for these kinds of cases: Suppose that policy said: If the allegation is sufficiently heinous, we take the child first and investigate later. 

So now, it’s happening to you, and the caseworker is at your door. The dialogue might go like this: 

YOU: But I’m innocent. You can see the children are unharmed!

CASEWORKER: It doesn’t matter. We don’t evaluate case-by-case; it’s a blanket policy. The allegations are heinous, so we take the children. That way, no child will die, and that’s the only metric that matters.

YOU: But there’s abuse in one-quarter to one-third of foster homes; the rate in group homes and institutions is even worse. And this is New Mexico, where children get moved from home to home at one of the highest rates in the nation. Think of the chances they’ll be abused.

CASEWORKER: That metric doesn’t matter.

YOU: But if it drags on long enough, they’ll fall behind on their education.

CASEWORKER: That metric doesn’t matter.

YOU: They’ll be more likely to wind up in the juvenile justice system.

CASEWORKER: That metric doesn’t matter.

YOU: They’re more likely to be unemployed.

CASEWORKER: That metric doesn’t matter.

YOU: They’re more likely to wind up in jail than to graduate from college.

CASEWORKER: That metric doesn’t matter.

YOU: They’re more than four times more likely to die before age 20 than even comparably maltreated children left in their own homes!

CASEWORKER: That metric doesn’t matter. 

So what do you say then? Do you say: Oh, well, you’re right. Whether children die – right away – is the only metric that matters, so of course I’ll sacrifice my child to this policy and let my children suffer all those other consequences. Or do you fight like hell? And do you start to wonder how many scores, maybe hundreds of other children have been taken needlessly and subjected to the harm from all those other metrics – because those metrics – and those harms – don’t matter? 

When you ignore people who already are stereotyped and stigmatized (using the same tactics Trump uses to stereotype and stigmatize immigrants, by the way), it’s easy to dehumanize them. When you dehumanize them, it's easy to convince yourself that they don’t love their children the way you love yours, and to convince yourself those children don’t love their parents the way your children love you. So it’s easy to convince yourself that all those other metrics – about all the harm done by separation – don’t really matter for them. You can even wrap yourself in the self-righteous conviction that you’re saving the children instead of putting them at greater risk. 

Perhaps the New Mexico journalists and lawmakers most keen on confiscation-at-birth and the whole take-the-child-and-run mentality should try speaking to families who’ve gone through needless removal (families with all perspectives, not just one parent put forward by proponents to confess her sins and express her gratitude for having her child taken). Then they might reconsider their love for an approach that only applies to people like them and not to people like us. They might even find out that the people like them are full-fledged human beings who typically love their children as much as people like us love ours. 

And then they might even ask those who say fatalities are “the only metric that matters” why they support approaches that, in addition to all that other harm, actually make it more likely that children will die.

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending July 28, 2026

● The Washington Post has done a lot to advance the story of the trauma inflicted on Pete Buttigieg’s family as a result of a malicious false report of child abuse.  Among other things, the Michigan Attorney General’s office has announced it will be investigating the investigation. That’s because, a spokesperson says, “Common sense would have shown that this targeted report plainly lacked credibility on its face.” 

Well, yes. But apparently the Attorney General doesn’t know that Michigan law prohibits the exercise of common sense. If an allegation even “minimally” meets the definition of child abuse or neglect in state law, it must be investigated – something we pointed out in this commentary for Bridge Michigan 

● There’s another excellent commentary on the Buttigieg case from Viviana Bonilla López of the ACLU Women’s Rights Project in The 74. Bonilla López points out: 

What set Buttigieg apart was not that his family was treated unjustly, but that he had the money, legal representation and public support that families with fewer resources will never have. 

● People often ask for a formula for successfully reducing needless foster care, as though there is a checklist of interventions that fits every case. But the places that succeed know that the actual formula is: “whatever it takes.” Case in point: this story from The Imprint on how the Osage Nation dramatically reduced foster care, at one point even going six months without a single child being taken. 

● There is fury, as there should be, over the New Mexico family police agency effectively abandoning a 15-year-old at the Mexican border. But some of those screaming loudest may have helped create conditions that set the crisis in motion. I have a blog post about it. 

● The Imprint reports on some good news from Santa Clara County. In that county, children have been ripped from their families at a pace so frantic it’s been the worst foster-care panic anywhere in America in decades. The new cases so overloaded the agency providing family defense that they said they’d have to shut down. But the County is stepping in with additional funding to save most of the work. Most, but not all. One of their strongest programs, providing defense counsel before a case ever reaches court, won’t be funded unless someone else steps up. 

● The news is uglier in San Bernardino County. There, two lawsuits filed by victims of horrific abuse are a reminder of why private agencies should not get virtual immunity from such suits. Nor should they get a bailout to help pay their insurance premiums. I have a blog post about it. 

● One of the children allegedly abused in these cases, in her case fatally, was disabled. The Imprint reports on efforts by the Trump Administration to make sure we all know less about how disabled children and parents fare at the hands of the family police. Mother Jones also has a story. 

In this week’s reminder that The Horror Stories Go in All Directions: 

From WSOC-TV: 

The family of a 13-year-old Chester boy is demanding answers after investigators said he was stabbed and held underwater by two older teens at a South Carolina lake. Daryl Lowry, who was in foster care at the time of his death, was killed during a confrontation near a boat dock in McCormick County, according to state authorities.