Catching up with some of the news over the past three weeks
while I was away, starting with two important stories from Arizona:
● The Arizona Daily Star
reports on the state’s use of coerced “voluntary” placements
into foster care that deny families even the minimum due process protections of
the formal system. There are hundreds of
such placements, and, like other states, Arizona admits they don’t even report
them to the federal government as entries into care. That is an apparent violation of federal
regulations. I discuss those regulations
in this
blog post about Texas, where the practice is so widespread it probably
accounts for nearly two-thirds of foster care entries.
● The
Arizona Republic reports on a
scathing decision by an Arizona appellate court overturning the termination
of a father’s parental rights. As the Republic
story puts it: “Sloppy work, lack of evidence and outright lies caused a father
to lose parental rights to his daughter, the Court of Appeals argued in an
opinion that criticizes the work of nearly everyone involved in the
four-year-long case.” Republic
columnist Laurie Roberts has
an excellent column linking this case to other failings in Arizona child
welfare.
The court decision aptly illustrates the point made by Vivek
Sankaran inhis latest column: High quality appellate
advocacy also is essential to prevent this kind of harm to children.
● I often write about how child welfare systems err in all
directions. It doesn’t always err in all
directions involving the same person – but that’s what happened to Sarah
Harris. As a child, her cries of sexual abuse were ignored. As a mother, her
own child was taken needlessly. Few
people are in a better position to critique HBO’s documentary Foster. Ms. Harris does just that in this excellent
column for Rise.
