Without ever intending it, New Mexico’s governor has made it more likely that vulnerable children will die – and used an Orwellian justification

A wealth of research suggests Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s
child-confiscation-at-birth directive will lead to more child deaths.
But she justifies the directive by saying, in effect, well,  they haven’t died yet.
A directive likely to cost lives is justified with a claim that it saves lives.
Orwell would understand.

This week, without explanation, New Mexico’s Supreme Court upheld Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s child-confiscation-at-birth directive. Under this directive, issued nearly a year ago, any child “born exposed to methamphetamines, fentanyl, polysubstance, or diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome” is taken away on-the-spot. 

Since Grisham issued her decree, more than 200 children have been confiscated, torn from their mothers during the most important hours of their lives, their first. Since then, says the governor, in a comment quoted in some form over and over: none has died. That claim has become a mantra, echoed by the take-the-child-and-run fan club among state journalists, which, sadly, seems to encompass a lot of major news organizations.

But Grisham’s claim is, at best, incomplete, and at worst, grossly misleading. 

What the governor should have said is None has died – yet. 

Because the evidence is overwhelming that, for all sorts of reasons, some of those children the governor and her allies claim to have saved will die prematurely. Others will suffer other grievous harm. It will happen because they were taken needlessly. But it will happen in ways that insulate Grisham, and the advocates and journalists who support the confiscation-at-birth policy from any accountability.  Was that the governor’s intent? Of course not. But it’s the likely result. 

Here are some of the things research tells us that the governor either doesn’t know or chose to ignore: 

● Some children will die because of the intrinsic toxicity of removal itself. I’m not even talking about the high rate of physical and sexual abuse in foster care; I’m talking about inherent trauma; the kind of trauma documented by that study I keep citing from Sweden – the one showing that, in typical cases, children placed in foster care were more than four times more likely to die by age 20 than even comparably-maltreated children left in their own homes. The most common cause of death was suicide. The numbers aren’t small. Among children left in their own homes, 1.8% died before age 20. Among the foster children, it was 8.6%. 

This study is just one of so many showing so many horrible outcomes for foster youth – again, when compared to comparably-maltreated children left in their own homes, that it’s now possible to calculate how many more children will suffer all sorts of grievous harm, including premature death, because of things like Grisham’s confiscation at birth policy and similar actions that encourage needless placement. 

I think this kind of intrinsic toxicity of placement is what New Yorker writer Larissa MacFarquhar was getting at in what amounts to a message to her fellow journalists, a message many reporters in New Mexico seem determined to ignore.

● And there are other terrible consequences for children. As we pointed out in our rebuttal to a report from an even more clueless New Mexico politician, a clue to those consequences can be found in a study conducted during a previous “worst drug plague ever,” crack cocaine:

Researchers studied two groups of children born with cocaine in their systems; one group was placed in foster care, another left with birth mothers able to care for them. After six months, the babies were tested using all the usual measures of infant development: rolling over, sitting up, reaching out. Typically, the children left with their birth mothers did better.  For the foster children, the separation from their mothers was more toxic than the cocaine. 

Similarly, consider what The New York Times found when it looked at the best way to treat infants born with opioids in their systems. According to the Times: 

[A] growing body of evidence suggests that what these babies need is what has been taken away: a mother.  Separating newborns in withdrawal can slow the infants’ recovery, studies show, and undermine an already fragile parenting relationship. When mothers are close at hand, infants in withdrawal require less medication and fewer costly days in intensive care. 

“Mom is a powerful treatment,” said Dr. Matthew Grossman, a pediatric hospitalist at Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital who has studied the care of opioid-dependent babies. 

● On top of that, as the ACLU and two courageous legislators, State Sen. Linda López and Rep. Micaela Lara Cadena, pointed out when they sought to stop this anti-child policy, that policy poses direct threats to children’s lives and health: 

The directive causes the very harm it purports to prevent. Stigma and criminalization drive families away from care — parents may avoid prenatal appointments, travel out of state to give birth, or conceal their health history from providers, leaving both mother and child worse off. 

As the drug policy experts at the Reason Foundation put it in a critique of the confiscation-at-birth policy 

Decades of public health evidence show New Mexico’s new mandate is a superficial fix that undermines effective, long-term solutions. 

As the ACLU also notes, the point is not that no child ever should be taken under these circumstances. Odds are there are some among those 200 children for whom removal, while extremely harmful, still was less harmful than leaving them in their homes. But, as the ACLU explains, 

A decision to remove a newborn from their mother should not be determined by a blanket policy. Instead, it should be made through an individualized assessment of the particular circumstances of each child. The right to due process of law requires that every family be treated as an individual family unit –– not treated as a category. New Mexico children deserve the chance to grow up with the people who love them and for decisions made about their wellbeing to be grounded in law, medicine, and their actual circumstances.” 

But while the directive is enormously dangerous for children, it’s perfect for politicians and their enablers. Because, assuming the governor is correct, none of the children has died yet. 

By the time that happens, it may be years from now. By then, the child might be in her or his third foster home, or maybe institutionalized, or trapped in some awful makeshift placement and driven to suicide – as, of course, happened in New Mexico, twice in 2025 alone. 

By then, Grisham will be long out of office. The journalists will have collected their little awards and moved on, after proudly pointing to Grisham’s policy on the part of the award entry form that says, “What did the stories accomplish?” So when that child needlessly confiscated at birth suffers lifelong debilitating illness, or injury – or dies prematurely – no one will hold any of them accountable. 

Meanwhile, a policy that makes it more likely that more children will die is justified on grounds that none has died yet. George Orwell would have understood.

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending June 9, 2026

● In a case involving what is alleged to be rampant lying by both foster parents and a family police agency supervisor in Alaska, a judge sanctioned the entire agency for needlessly tearing a newborn from her mother, who was herself a foster child. According to the Anchorage Daily News:

In a scathing 23-page order, the judge said the in-court testimony of an unnamed [child welfare agency] supervisor was “anything but truthful to this Court and either attempted to deceive or trick this Court and the parties,” suggesting the person may have lied under oath. 

● Gothamist reports on some of the nine – yes nine – separate lawsuits, including a major class-action, challenging how the New York City family police agency, the Administration for Children’s Services, routinely abuses its power to remove children in so-called emergencies without so much as asking a judge first. From the story: 

Melissa Friedman, an attorney in charge at the Legal Aid Society who represents children in family court, said emergency removals often traumatize the children she and her colleagues represent. Younger children may experience more bedwetting, nightmares, tantrums and self harm, she said, while older kids often act out. At least one child compared the experience to being kidnapped, she said. 

As for why there are so many such suits in New York City: It’s not because the city’s family police agency is worse than others across the country, it's because the city’s network of legal representation for children and families is better. 

● Nebraska has long torn apart families at one of the highest rates in the nation. Compounding the problem, KETV reports, the state is vastly increasing the number of those children it institutionalizes. 

● The Colorado Sun reports that Colorado’s child abuse hotline accepts for investigation 26% of calls – unless the call involves abuse in a residential treatment center. Then, over the past five years, only 8% were accepted for investigation. 

Some better news in two other states, where some good legislation is progressing: 

● In Illinois, WGLT Public Radio reports: 

Illinois lawmakers unanimously passed a bill during the spring legislative session that gives more transparency and tools to parents to defend themselves in child abuse cases. 

The bill requires child abuse pediatricians — investigators at the hospital who look at medical records to determine if there is potential child abuse — to state who they are to parents as they start an investigation. It also allows parents to get a second opinion and use that during court hearings. 

● And in Pennsylvania, CapitolWire reports 

The House Children and Youth Committee on Tuesday unanimously approved two bipartisan measures designed to reform child welfare and strengthen protections for parental rights. … 

House Bill 133 allows Pennsylvania courts to restore parental rights in certain cases when a parent has successfully rehabilitated and a child has not been adopted, giving families a second chance. … 

House Bill 138 also protects the rights of incarcerated parents by ensuring incarceration alone cannot be used to terminate parental rights. It requires courts to consider a parent’s efforts to stay involved in their child’s life while incarcerated. 

● Writing for the Center for New York City Affairs, Angela Burton and Joyce McMillan note that 

Mayor Zohran Mamdani's create[ed]… the Office of Community Safety – based on the idea that early interventions can increase safety before policing becomes the only available strategy. 

They call for doing the same to curb family policing by creating an Office of Family Well-Being. 

● And in Kentucky, a judge has ordered the arrest of former Gov. Matt Bevin for allegedly failing to produce documents the court demanded in connection with a child support case pursued by the son he adopted from Ethiopia. But, as WKYT reports, that’s only the latest twist in a story of an adoption gone horribly wrong. There’s more about the case here and here.

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending June 2, 2026

● A lawsuit challenging the New York City family police agency’s misuse of its power to tear apart families without even going through the pro-forma process of asking a judge first was the subject of stories in The Imprint, the New York Daily News, and some extraordinary journalism in The New Yorker. I have a blog post with links to all of those stories, with particular attention to what The New Yorker published. I want to highlight just one part of that story here: 

In the lawsuits against A.C.S., a legal victory may actually be less important than changing public perception, because the law as written isn’t the main problem: the problem is that A.C.S. isn’t following it. A.C.S. isn’t following it because public pressure is pushing it in only one direction. Insofar as most people know anything at all about child-protective services, they know that its caseworkers are people who rescue children from danger. They hear about A.C.S. only when this mission fails and a child ends up dead. Therefore, A.C.S. follows the mantra of “better safe than sorry,” where “safe” often means preventing the kind of harm to a child that A.C.S. might be blamed for, while discounting the harm of separating children from their families. An unpublished report in 2020 found that some A.C.S. staff “described an internal culture that operates on fear and intimidation. . . . This frequently means that staff err on the side of safety for themselves, by seeking removal.” 

This means sending into foster care thousands of children who would be better off with their parents. …  The litigators hope that the seizure lawsuit will bring public attention to unwarranted A.C.S. removals, because, if sufficient outrage can be generated, then “safe”—both for children and for A.C.S. staff—can be redefined. 

● Some of the same groups that brought the lawsuit about emergency removals won a victory in an earlier suit involving that kind of separation. As The Imprint reports: 

A federal appeals court has revived a closely watched lawsuit brought by a Bronx father who alleges that New York City’s child welfare agency violated his family’s constitutional rights by taking custody of his infant son without a court order and without adequate justification. The two were separated for nearly three years even though the father was accused of no wrongdoing. 

● Last week, I highlighted a story from Abortion, Every Day that begins this way: 

Child Protective Services (CPS) has targeted mothers in multiple states who helped their daughters seek out abortions. In one case, CPS removed a teen from her home—and threatened her mother with murder charges—to stop her from getting an abortion. 

After forcing that girl to give birth, “CPS opened up an investigation into the teen for being a young mother.” 

On MS Now, Ali Velshi recaps the story and discusses the implications with Prof. Dorothy Roberts, author of Shattered Bonds, and Torn Apart (and a member of NCCPR’s Board). Media Matters for America published this video excerpt and has a transcript of Prof. Roberts’ interview. 

          

● The Associated Press has the latest in a long line of superb exposés of the “troubled teen” industry - this time focusing on a subset of “residential treatment centers” that specialize in institutionalizing adopted children. In addition to exposing allegations of widespread, horrific abuse, the AP story examined the business strategy of Embark Behavioral Health, the for-profit firm that runs many such institutions. From the story: 

“DOING EPIC SH$T” was printed on the cover of the August 2020 “Embark Academy Sales & Marketing Conference” handbook. It featured a session on how to “overcome objections” with sales tactics to “build your client base and keep your pipelines full!” 

Attendees were urged to touch hearts to help “assure a doubting child or resentful spouse.” In a session that touted admissions as a vital part of the treatment team, the handbook noted: “The admissions person sells hope when the family is at their lowest and most hopeless, scary, and vulnerable time.” 

A sidebar looks more closely into how the industry exploits loopholes and lax supervision by governments, who appear just fine with having the children out-of-sight and out-of-mind. 

(One footnote: The story also inadvertently exposes something else: The idiocy of management at the AP. Because in the very last line, Sally Ho, one of the authors of this story, and so many other great stories, including exposing the harm of Pittsburgh’s predictive analytics child welfare algorithm, is listed as "a former Associated Press reporter.")

What happens when the family police and their enablers in politics and journalism treat impoverished children and their families as sub-human? A story in The New Yorker has some answers.

A story in The New Yorker notes that “A.C.S. acknowledges that many of its caseworkers have
 ‘experienced the toddler whose little fingers have to be pried off of her mother.’” 

There is a standard line used by those most fanatical about tearing apart families and throwing the children into foster care. It comes from the worst of the advocates and politicians, and it’s eagerly quoted by the worst of the journalists. You hear it in an effort to roll back even the most modest reforms, and to justify foster-care panics, sharp, sudden increases in children torn from everyone they know and love in response to high-profile tragedies. 

The exact wording varies, but it’s some version of: Foster care isn’t perfect, but at least the children aren’t dead. 

The first thing to understand about this kind of statement is: It’s inaccurate. In typical cases, not the horror stories, children placed in foster care actually are more likely to die, and suffer severe, debilitating illness, than comparably maltreated children left in their own homes. I’ll get to the details about that, and links to the various studies that prove it, below. 

But first, I want to turn to the part about “foster care isn’t perfect…” Anyone who uses that phrase is inherently unqualified to talk about foster care, because it is, in itself, an act of emotional abuse, a way to diminish and dismiss the inherent severe pain and trauma of removal as a mere imperfection. I don’t just mean the high rates of abuse in foster care itself. I mean the kind of routine trauma documented in a story published last week by Larissa MacFarquhar in The New Yorker. 

The story deals with a class-action lawsuit against the family police agency in New York City, the Administration for Children’s Services, challenging their routine abuse of “emergency” power to literally, take-the-child-and-run, tearing children from the arms of their parents and throwing them into foster care without asking a judge for permission first. What do I mean by “literally”? As the story itself notes: “A.C.S. acknowledges that many of its caseworkers have ‘experienced the toddler whose little fingers have to be pried off of her mother.’” 

As The Imprint points out in its own story on the lawsuit, the practice isn’t limited to New York City. In fact, it’s probably worse elsewhere. There's also a good story in the New York Daily News.

But perhaps the most important contribution the New Yorker story makes, and what makes it so relevant everywhere, is the way it brings home the inherent trauma of removal, trauma that lasts long after the children are back home.  Here’s what it did to the children in the family of one of the named plaintiffs in the suit, children who never should have been taken away in the first place: 

They stayed in foster care for almost three years. The first set of foster parents found Jasmine too difficult to handle, so she was sent to another home without her brothers, then to a third home, and then a fourth. The various parents found her so troublesome that they repeatedly called 911. She was forcibly medicated; on about ten occasions, she was sent to psychiatric wards, something that had never happened when she lived with her family. Her mother was not allowed to visit her in the hospital. … 

The three years of separation and foster care will leave a permanent mark on the family. Daevon, who is five, fearfully apologizes to his mother if he does something wrong. … Jasmine withdraws much of the time. While she was away, she once threatened to hurt herself and said that she wished she were dead. She blames herself for things that happened to her in care. When Jeremiah, the middle child, who is seven, was in his foster home, he started pulling out his eyebrow hairs and wetting the bed. He now tells his mom that she is not a bad mother. 

And this is what happened to the children of the other named plaintiff; again, children who never should have been taken away in the first place: 

After A.C.S. conducted its emergency removal of Lorimer’s children … they were taken to the Children’s Center in Manhattan, a holding place for kids who have entered the system. The children were separated from each other and assigned to dormitories by age. It felt to them like a jail. (Many children say they have been assaulted there.) Zoe arrived carrying a spiral notebook that contained years of drawings; it was taken away because wire wasn’t allowed, and she never got it back. 

Although the most recent removal was shorter than the first, [Larimer] sees that her kids have been changed by it. The girls cling to her. Kayden cries when she leaves. Zoe fills her book bag with as many things as she can carry—extra clothes, her sisters’ stuffed animals. … 

Now imagine pain like this inflicted up to 175,000 times every year. That’s how often children are thrown into foster care – officially. It does not, of course, count hidden foster care* placements.  It is a tsunami of children’s suffering, routinely dismissed by the child welfare establishment and its enablers in politics and journalism. 

What does it really mean when they dismiss this pain as “foster care is not perfect” or (inaccurately, it turns out) some version of  “well, at least they’re not dead.” Can you imagine any of these same people being so sanguine if the family police pounded on their door and said: “We’re taking your children tonight. A child died on this block, so we’re just going to take every child on this block – just in case. After all, we don’t want your children to wind up dead.” 

But the enablers of foster-care panic, and those who oppose any effort to curb needless removal, are overwhelmingly middle-class professionals and disproportionately white. So they know full well that their children are largely immune from the harm caused by their own advocacy. It is extremely unlikely a family police agency caseworker will show up at their door at all, much less walk off with the children. 

What this really suggests is that, deep down, the overwhelmingly middle-class professionals who run these systems, govern these systems from statehouses, and write about them from newsrooms, don't really view these overwhelmingly poor, disproportionately nonwhite children, or their families as fully human. They are something less. The suffering of children like theirs somehow doesn’t count the way the suffering of children like ours counts. 

It reveals itself in so many ways: 

● The casual cruelty of never giving Zoe back her notebook – and the fact that even worse acts of cruelty, denying children whose parents were taken from them forever even mementos of their former lives, sometimes is routine. 

● The behavior of journalists in West Virginia – child removal capital of America - who can write 10,000 words about foster care with not one of those words coming from a parent whose children were taken, or from children saying they never needed to be taken. You can find similar behavior among some journalists in other states as well. 

● Or someone like Prof. Sarah Font, who’s actually suggested that older foster youth may be better off “aging out” with no home at all than being reunified or placed in guardianship with relatives, because, if they age out, they’ll get more financial benefits. 

As I’ve noted before, this attitude, that poor children, especially poor nonwhite children, don’t really suffer when taken from their parents, or at least not enough for it to matter, and all these suggestions that somehow love means less to them than to our children, reminds me of nothing so much as a notorious comment by Gen. William Westmoreland about Asians during the Vietnam War:  “'The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner,” Westmoreland said. “Life is cheap in the Orient." 

For the worst of the child welfare establishment, and their political and journalistic enablers, the lives of poor, nonwhite children and their parents are cheap indeed. 

Where are children more likely to die? 

That also may explain why this same establishment, and those same enablers, can’t even face up to the simple fact that their approach not only doesn’t save lives, it makes it more likely that more children will die. 

For starters, recall the massive study which found that tearing apart more families does nothing to curb child abuse deaths, and reducing foster care does nothing to increase them. 

But it’s even worse than that. An honest version of the statement about deaths in foster care would be: “…at least they’re not dead yet.” 

Because, as I’ve noted in previous posts, there is now a vast body of research from around the world showing how, in typical cases, children placed in foster care typically fare worse even than comparably-maltreated children left in their own homes on all sorts of measures – including premature death. 

So, for example, a Swedish study found that in typical cases, among maltreated children left in their own homes, 1.8% died by age 20. Among children facing the same level of maltreatment at home, when placed in foster care, 8.6% died by age 20. The foster youth were more than four times more likely to die. The most common cause of death: Suicide. 

And we’re not talking about dying at age 70 instead of age 80 – as though that wouldn’t be bad enough. We’re talking about dying before turning 21. 

Premature death is just the tip of the iceberg. Many more will suffer from serious illness and disability. 

There are so many similar studies measuring so many rotten outcomes for foster youth that it’s actually possible to project how many more children will die and will suffer such illness and disability due to a foster care panic, like the one in Santa Clara County, California right now, and how many lives have been saved in places such as New York City and New Jersey that have safely reduced needless foster care. 

So I wonder if Larissa MacFarquhar was really speaking to some of her fellow journalists when she wrote this: 

In the lawsuits against A.C.S., a legal victory may actually be less important than changing public perception, because the law as written isn’t the main problem: the problem is that A.C.S. isn’t following it. A.C.S. isn’t following it because public pressure is pushing it in only one direction. Insofar as most people know anything at all about child-protective services, they know that its caseworkers are people who rescue children from danger. They hear about A.C.S. only when this mission fails and a child ends up dead. Therefore, A.C.S. follows the mantra of “better safe than sorry,” where “safe” often means preventing the kind of harm to a child that A.C.S. might be blamed for, while discounting the harm of separating children from their families. An unpublished report in 2020 found that some A.C.S. staff “described an internal culture that operates on fear and intimidation. . . . This frequently means that staff err on the side of safety for themselves, by seeking removal.” 

This means sending into foster care thousands of children who would be better off with their parents. …  The litigators hope that the seizure lawsuit will bring public attention to unwarranted A.C.S. removals, because, if sufficient outrage can be generated, then “safe”—both for children and for A.C.S. staff—can be redefined. 

*=Some official placements and many hidden foster care placements are with relatives. Those typically inflict less pain. But those most extreme about tearing apart families also are among those most hostile to these kinship foster care placements.

Illustration by ChatGPT

NCCPR in the CT Mirror: CT’s DCF, slouching back to mediocrity: To save more children, it must refocus on keeping families together.

New legislation “sends a clear and powerful message,” says a lawmaker. 

“It is time to look at what is not working and fix it,” says another lawmaker. 

“It’s got to be all hands on deck,” says an advocate. 

If throwing cliches at a problem would solve it, Connecticut would have the best child welfare system in America. Instead, the tired thinking reflected in those tired cliches explains the real problem: A state that once really might have become the best, or at least the least bad, child welfare system in America has been slouching back to mediocrity or worse. 

Read the full column in CT Mirror

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

● Because of its vast unchecked power and no real accountability, few (if any) government power centers are easier to weaponize than the family police. Look who’s weaponizing them now:

Abortion, Every Day has learned that Child Protective Services (CPS) has targeted mothers in multiple states who helped their daughters seek out abortions. In one case, CPS removed a teen from her home—and threatened her mother with murder charges—to stop her from getting an abortion. Another mother, one who lives in a state where abortion is legal, faced an investigation from both CPS and local police after helping her teen end a pregnancy. 

These stories—shared with AED by the attorneys and advocates at If/When/How—represent a new and largely unexamined consequence of the end of Roe. It’s no longer enough that women have to worry they’ll die of sepsis while surrounded by doctors that can’t legally treat them, or that they’ll be arrested for how they dispose of their miscarriages. Now the government is using family separation as an anti-abortion … 

See also the sidebar on how If/When/How is fighting back. It starts with another example of family police brutality. 

Some better news on the litigation front: 

● He’s known in court papers as K.W. He was never accused of harming his newborn son in any way. And for a week, he was allowed to keep his newborn, unmolested by New York City’s family police agency, the Administration for Children’s Services. But, as amNY reports,  according to his lawsuit, suddenly, six days later, the family police showed up, took the child – and held him in foster care for three years. 

Though they had six days to do it, ACS never asked a court for permission. Suddenly, after leaving the boy and his father alone for six days, ACS decided the case was an “emergency” and snatched away the child without going to court first. Such abuse of “emergency” power is common in New York City and all over the country – something to keep in mind whenever the family police and their apologists dredge up that tired lie about “we can’t take children on our own.” From the story: 

My infant son was torn from my arms by ACS when he was just a few days old and put into foster care with strangers,” said K.W., the father in his appeal. “I fought with all my heart and might to get him back for nearly three years. After my son came home, we’ve been fighting to right that devastating wrong.” 

K.W. hasn’t won his suit. But an appellate court at least is allowing it to move forward. 

● And just today (May 28) the Family Justice Law Center, which represents K.W., joined by several other groups, including the Legal Aid Society’s Juvenile Rights Practice, which represents children in these cases, have filed a class-action suit to stop ACS’s rampant abuse of its emergency removal power. As FJLC explains: 

ACS often violates families’ basic constitutional rights by conducting emergency removals in situations that are not true emergencies. ACS’s own data show that most child removals now happen without prior judicial authorization – almost 1,500 last year alone. And when these cases finally reach family court, at the very first hearing judges find no justification for children to remain in state custody nearly 30 percent of the time – indicating that many of these purportedly “emergency” removals never met the legal standard for a removal in the first place, yet the lasting harm has already been done.

As one of the plaintiffs said:

“ACS workers are wolves in sheep’s clothing, and you have to be very cautious with them when you’re a Black or Latino parent,” said Plaintiff Denise Archer, who filed under a pseudonym to protect her family. “I tried to go to ACS to seek some type of assistance when my family was going through a hard time, and it turned into an almost three-year separation where I had to fight every step of the way to get my kids returned home. Even though ACS is supposed to be the entity you go to when you’re a family in need, they have their own hidden agendas, and my family and I had to pay the price of that.”

● Families won a big victory from New York State’s highest court, the Court of Appeals: The Court is refusing to allow what amounts to a shadow, hidden foster care system that started in Illinois and metastasized into many other states to take hold in New York. I have a blog post about what should be called sugar-frosted foster care, including links to stories about the decision from The Imprint and Courthouse News Service. 

● In New Mexico, Source NM reports that the state branch of the ACLU and two courageous legislators are suing to block an order issued by the governor demanding that any child who tests positive for certain substances be confiscated at birth. From the story: 

The petition cited a December letter signed by more than 70 New Mexico providers saying that pregnant women may forgo prenatal care or treatment due to concerns of losing their children and called the directive “dangerous.” 

Rep. Micaela Lara Cadena (D-Las Cruces), who joined Sen. Linda López (D-Albuquerque) in filing the petition, told Source NM the policy is “patently unlawful.” 

“We have a state-sanctioned policy, when we are removing kids without an individualized finding, not based on what’s happening in their particular family, in their particular pregnancy, their circumstances, just a blanket policy that says, ‘if there was exposure in this pregnancy, we are automatically taking your child at birth,’” Lara Cadena said. “So for me, that’s a dangerous precedent; among other things, it’s going to push people further into the shadows.” 

● And in Maine, the Maine Monitor reports, the state Supreme Court overturned the termination of five children’s rights to their parents (a more accurate term than termination of parental rights) that was based largely on the fact that a supervisor told the court she read in a record somewhere that the mother allegedly hadn’t passed two drug tests (which, by the way are notoriously unreliable to begin with). 

And some better news about safety – if the lessons are learned 

● Ten days ago, we published a post about calculating the price of foster-care panic. Because there are now so many studies documenting how, in typical cases, children placed in foster care fare worse even than comparably-maltreated children left in their own homes, it is now possible to calculate how many children will suffer serious harm to their health, and even premature death, because they were needlessly thrown into foster care. 

It works both ways. It’s also possible to calculate the lives saved in places like New York City and New Jersey that have safely reduced foster care placements. This week, we have a post with those data. 

● It’s a lesson that urgently needs to be learned right now in nearby Suffolk County, where it looks like a foster-care panic may have started, for the usual reasons. 

Legislators seem to be getting smarter, too  

● You may recall that some rural counties in Minnesota are whining about a new law requiring them to actually get serious about helping families so their children don’t endure the trauma of needless foster care. They wanted implementation of the law delayed. But Minnesota lawmakers didn’t get suckered. Instead, they passed legislation which, if signed by the governor, will give the counties some more money to do what they should have been doing all along.  One element of the bill is concerning, though.  As The Imprint reports: 

If enacted, counties would receive the funds based on the number of children who live within their borders as well as the number of screened-in reports of child abuse or neglect, and open child protection cases. 

The problem with this should be obvious. 

● In March, I wrote about how the family police agency in Tennessee wanted the authority to get rid of “problem” foster youth. They wanted to be able to throw in jail any foster child who they felt was getting out of line, or even threatening to get out of line. Lawmakers refused, in part because of the superb advocacy efforts of a former foster youth, Ella Bet-Ami. Now The Imprint has a profile of Bet-Ami. 

In other news: 

From NCCPR's op-ed column in CT Mirror: 

If throwing cliches at a problem would solve it, Connecticut would have the best child welfare system in America. Instead, the tired thinking reflected in those tired cliches [from legislators and advocates] explains the real problem: A state that once really might have become the best, or at least the least bad, child welfare system in America has been slouching back to mediocrity or worse. 

● Two children with diabetes died in Arizona group homes after not getting the medical care they need. Now, KNXV-TV reports, the lawyer for their families wants the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the Arizona family police agency for discriminating against the disabled, in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. It would be the second such investigation in Arizona. As the story notes: 

In 2024, the DOJ's Civil Rights Division found DCS discriminated against parents and children with hearing disabilities and forced the agency to make changes. 

● The Imprint reports that the federal Administration for Children’s Services is making it easier for states and localities to incorporate seven specific programs into their plans under the Family First Act. One of those programs is Homebuilders – possibly the only approved program under this act that actually can provide families with what they often need most – concrete help. And oh, how the take-the-child-and-run crowd hates Homebuilders! 

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

Anybody see a pattern in these two stories? 

● From KARE-TV, Minneapolis:  

A north metro psychiatric residential treatment program is closing at least temporarily after its license was suspended over "an imminent risk of harm." … 

DHS alleged that the children served by the program did not have their basic rights protected. MDH alleges that suspected maltreatment was not reported, medications were not administered safely and accurately, there was not enough appropriately trained staff to ensure residents' treatment needs were met, and treatment services did not include adequate supervision to support residents' safety. DHS also alleges the facility was not kept in good repair. 

● From WBFF-TV Baltimore:

Maryland officials are preparing to remove foster children from Silver Oak Academy after the state confirmed for the first time that youth will no longer remain at the troubled Carroll County facility beyond June 30, marking the clearest sign yet that the privately operated program is effectively shutting down. 

This update follows months of reporting by Spotlight on Maryland documenting more than 100 emergency calls tied to the campus since January 2025, including reports of assaults, arson, runaway juveniles and staff concerns that the young residents were “overtaking the campus.” 

And, WBFF reports, the state either can’t or won’t even say how many children are missing from foster care. 

But this is not deterring Maryland from spending $1.2 billion over five years to warehouse children in 637 beds in a bunch of other institutions.

There will be no sugar-frosted foster care in New York

 

NOT SOLD IN NEW YORK!

The state’s highest court slays what one critic called “a hydra-headed quasi-foster care monster, with all of the hallmarks of foster care but none of the legal protections the law demands.”

A scheme to create what amounts to a second, hidden foster care system in New York, without even the bare minimum due process protections in the formal system, has been shut down by the state’s highest court. 

In a unanimous decision, the New York State Court of Appeals ruled that the state’s family police agency, the Office of Children and Family Services, had no legal authority to allow a system of so-called “Host Homes.” The model is based on, and developed in close consultation with, an organization called Safe Families For Children, which has similar models in multiple states. 

In other states, Safe Families has gotten state lawmakers to authorize the program. We can only hope New York legislators won’t be suckered into doing the same. 

Proponents portray Safe Families / Host Homes as just a purely voluntary program in which parents under stress, perhaps due to an illness, or homelessness, or some other financial problem, get a total stranger to take in the kids for a while. Sometimes this “voluntary” arrangement is “suggested” by a state or local family police agency. The parents, it is said, can get the kids back anytime they want.  But Safe Families actually is sugar-frosted foster care. 

Here’s the biggest catch. 

Unlike a family that leaves a child with a relative or a close friend, these families are leaving children with total strangers who know, at the outset, that the family has some kind of problem. Odds are the strangers will be a different race and class from many of the children. 

So what happens if the parent says, “OK, I’m ready to take my child back,” but the stranger doesn’t agree that they’re ready? The stranger can call the formal family police agency, which almost certainly will launch an investigation. The risk is even greater if, as often happens, the family police agency already is involved with the family and is looking over everyone’s shoulder from the start. 

The family desperate to find a place for their children – because no one is offering the kind of help they might need to keep them in their own home – may not know that. There is no lawyer looking over the paperwork, no one to say: “Wait a minute, maybe we can get you food aid or housing assistance so your children don’t need to lose you for a matter of days or weeks in the first place.” And there’s no one to point out that the stranger always has the option to call the family police. 

No wonder OCFS received at least 17 letters from advocates for both children and parents, opposed to letting this program into New York. One letter called it “a hydra-headed quasi-foster care monster, with all of the hallmarks of foster care but none of the legal protections the law demands.” The lawsuit to stop the program was led by lawyers who regularly represent children in child welfare cases. 

The founder of Safe Families for Children, David Anderson, says the program has taken 77,000 children into its volunteers’ homes since 2003. A lawyer for OCFS told the Court of Appeals that 99% were returned to their own homes. The Imprint reports, however, that it’s 93%. Either figure represents, as the OCFS lawyer said, “better numbers than foster care.” 

But that is the wrong comparison. Safe Families is a program used for families that either have no connection to the formal family policing system or are referred there by family police agencies as a form of “diversion” because even the agency doesn’t think they’re so unsafe they need to be taken by force of law. Of course, such a program will have a better reunification record than those placed in formal foster care. But the best track record, of course, would be attained by not putting poor people in an impossible position where their only option is to “voluntarily” surrender their children, because no one will provide them the help they really need. 

And Safe Families’ own figures mean that anywhere from 770 to 5,390 times, parents who thought they could get their children back anytime – they didn’t. 

One of the very examples Safe Families showcases illustrates the problem. A story about the program in The Imprint begins with a family that Safe Families likes to showcase as a success: 

In the summer of 2012, Corisma Gillespie hit a crisis point. Pregnant with her second child, the 20-year-old from the west side of Chicago had lost her job at McDonald’s. Her car was impounded, and she was about to become homeless. Desperate to provide for her children, she asked herself: “How can I do this?”  

A local program had an answer. She could hand her daughter over to a volunteer family through Willow Creek Community Church, almost an hour away in the suburbs. There would be no court hearings, judges, or lawyers involved when her child moved in with these strangers, and it would take almost no time to arrange. Her daughter could live in this “Safe Family” home for as long as Gillespie needed. All she had to do was sign a form. … 

After three weeks, she found a job and her first apartment, and her daughter came home to Chicago. 

Gee, what might either government, a charity, a church or a group of churches do instead? How about simply providing enough cash to tide the family over so Ms. Gillespie could stay in her apartment until she found another job? How about helping with the job search? 

One need only compare the Safe Families white savior rescue approach to what happened when communities themselves developed networks of mutual aid during COVID – and the federal government provided families with cash: Child abuse decreased. 

Indeed, early in the program’s history, in a comment posted anonymously on a television news website, one viewer understood the problem immediately: 

During the second World war Jewish family were separating from their children for the sake of children survival. The Nazis were set to kill them all. And now in the richest and, so far, peaceful country the best solution to the economic crises it to give up your children to charitable Christians for the sake of survival. Millions of homes taken by banks stay empty. Parents cannot buy children shoes, there are sleeping in subways. Instead of buying shoes and providing decent shelter for families with children "Good people" solve the state problem and offer their solution, they take children to their Christians homes. What country is that? What country allows that to happen? Charity starts with courage of thoughts. Courage of social changes. But as long as this is acceptable and cherished solutions, any real change in hearts and minds is impossible. 

Safe Families cites a study comparing outcomes for children in Illinois involved in a family police investigation, in which those who were placed in a Safe Families home (which, for all intents and purposes, is foster care) were less likely to end up in, uh, foster care than those who got conventional preventive services. 

So, for starters, if a family police agency is saying: We’re investigating you and we recommend you put your child into this “voluntary” program while we’re investigating you, that’s not exactly voluntary. 

Second, a comparison to conventional preventive services misses the point. Conventional preventive services usually mean lots of counseling and parent education, while doing nothing to ameliorate problems like the kind Ms. Gillespie had. 

And third, the study author, Prof. Mark Testa, says he had to omit results from Chicago for a disturbing reason. As The Imprint explained: 

As part of his research, Testa found “anecdotal evidence” that some Cook County child welfare workers were using the host program “as a way station” and “holding-pen” for kids while they completed their investigations. He had to exclude that county’s data in his final study. 

David Anderson, the group’s founder, has said, “The Lord gave me the idea of Safe Families for Children.” 

I am not religious and certainly have no expertise in theology. But the public record leads me to wonder if The Lord may have had a broader array of preventive services in mind. Surely one of the best-known Bible passages is this, from Matthew 25:35-40:

For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me. 

Nowhere in the Bible does it say: “I was a stranger and you invited my cute little kids in, but left me outside.” 

Illustraton via ChatGPT