● The Northwest
Indiana Times has begun an excellent series
on the confusion of poverty with neglect in Indiana, which takes away children
at one of the highest rates in the country.
And, in
this op-ed for the Palladium-Item, in Richmond, Indiana, a former foster
parent agrees.
● Remember that
case in which Arizona sent in the functional equivalent of a SWAT team to
break down a family’s door and take away the children? Needless to say, the state child welfare
agency is extremely embarrassed about this. In fact, they’re desperate to keep
as much as possible about what they did a secret.
So, the Arizona
Republic reports, they’ve gotten a judge to do the functional equivalent of
imposing
a gag order. So please spread this
particular story far and wide – because the best way to counter a gag order is
to let as many people as possible know the information that’s already part of
the public record.
● Call it the sequel to Sequel: NBC Nightly News has
another story about the problems at Clarinda Academy, an Iowa residential
treatment center run by Sequel, a for-profit chain of juvenile institutions.
● The couple met while in college, through an organization
for conservative Baptist students.
“Prior to this, I never would have called myself a supporter of Black
Lives Matter,” says the father. “My view
of law enforcement has completely changed.”
The “this” is a case that, though it involves only one family, will
remind readers who are old enough of cases such as the McMartin Preschool The
story is in Reason magazine.
● On the Rethinking Foster Care blog, Cathy Krebs, who
chairs the American Bar Association Children’s Rights Litigation Committee,
writes about children taken when poverty is confused with neglect only
to become effectively homeless in foster care. She writes: “The incredible irony is that
estimates are that 30% of children (I’ve even seen numbers as high as 50%) are
in foster care due to housing problems.
The thought process seems to be that it’s not okay for a child to be
homeless with his or her family but that it’s okay for the state to make a
child homeless on their own.”
● And
I have a blog post about a newly-rediscovered study which shows that Krebs
is right – it can be as high as 50 percent.
But this study documents even more: Not only is the solution housing, it
works better when the housing is not
accompanied by forcing the recipients into all sorts of other “soft” services
that are largely designed to help the helpers.
