● The good news: In Montana, the state that tears apart families
at the highest rate in the nation, the state Supreme Court finally found a case
in which the child welfare agency’s rush to terminate parental rights was so
egregious they
felt compelled to overturn it. The bad news: Out of 250 appeals since 2012,
this has happened no more than five times. Simply by reciting the facts of the
case the story offers useful insight into the appalling mentality that
permeates child welfare in Montana.
● In Arizona, the judge presiding over the case in which
police broke down a family’s door and took the children at gunpoint has
returned the children to their parents – but, the
Arizona Republic reports, legal
custody remains with the state, so they’ll still have to jump through all sorts
of pointless hoops.
● I have a blog post about how the advocates-in-scholars’-clothing
at Chapin Hall are fanning
the flames of foster-care panic in Illinois. And the Family Justice Resource Center has a letter
to the Chicago Tribune warning of
another group trying to exploit recent tragedies in that state: so-called child
abuse pediatricians.
● A
former foster youth on the HBO documentary “Foster”: “In regard to dignity
for foster youth, this film is a travesty.”
(We agree.)
●Two more examples of the horrors of being a foster child in
Oregon:
--After a scandal involving the placement of Oregon foster
children in out-of-state institutions, the state child welfare agency promised
to visit the places to be sure that Oregon children were not ill-treated. So off they went to the Red Rock Canyon
School in St. George, Utah. They came
back with a glowing report that made the place sound like the best summer camp
you could imagine.
Just one problem: As Oregon
Public Broadcasting reports, one day later, Utah issued its own
report. They found such severe problems
that they put the institution’s license on “conditional” status. Actually, make that two problems: The Oregon
DHS representatives visited the place, and wrote their gushy report “shortly
after a brawl erupted on campus where a SWAT team responded and reportedly
aimed guns at the foster youth.”
Why did the Oregon visitors see no evil, hear no evil, speak
no evil and write no evil in their report? Because Oregon tears apart families
at a rate far above the national average, creating an artificial “shortage” of
in-state foster homes. So they ship kids
all over the country and absolutely do not want to know what really happens to
them.
--This also explains the other horror to come to light in
Oregon last week: If the allegations in the lawsuit described in
this story are correct, Oregon all but guaranteed that the foster children
on whose behalf the suit was brought would be abused in foster care.
