News and commentary round-up, week ending July 9, 2019

● What is it like to be innocent, yet trapped on a massive blacklist of alleged child abusers? What does it do to a family? It happened to Hope Lyzette Newton.  She fought her way off the blacklist. She tells her story in this essay from the Rethinking Foster Care blog.

● Another moving essay comes from Kelly Buffalo-Quinn, a Native American woman who writes: “I Lost Control of My Baby’s Adoption Because of the Indian Child Welfare Act. And I’m Glad It Happened.”   An excerpt:

We are the originals and it’s laws like ICWA and decisions like my Tribal Council’s that protect our bodies, our descendants, our language and our way of life. The preservation of indigenous cultures is the only reason we have survived for so long. Continued preservation is the only way we will keep surviving. … It took me years to come to terms with, but ICWA did its job. It preserved this native child just as it was intended. And because of that, I know he will always have a home — a true home — in his a place among my people.

 You can see Ms. Buffalo-Quinn tell her story in this video:

 ● On this blog: Last month the head of New York City’s child welfare agency, the Administration for Children’s Services, told a City Council hearing that they didn’t have aggregate data on the use of psychiatric medication on foster children.  He said that was some other agency’s job.  What he apparently didn’t tell the Council is that, more than ten years ago, the New York State Office of Children and Family Services urged – but did not require – ACS and its upstate counterparts to gather and track these data themselves.

● Still, one can always feel better about child welfare in New York City by looking at child welfare in Philadelphia. Here’s another case in point.