Tuesday, December 17, 2019

NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending December 17, 2019


● Of course the most important news was the outstanding series, “Throwaway Kids” from the Kansas City Star.  I have a blog post on it, with links to the stories.  And one of the reporters on the series, Laura Bauer, was interviewed on NPR’s Morning Edition.


● Echoing the Star’s findings, the nation’s top child welfare official, Jerry Milner, spoke of the confusion of poverty with neglect at a conference in Mississippi. The Jackson, (Miss.) Free Press has a report.

● The New York Daily News has an excellent op-ed column from Michele Cortese and Tehra Coles of the Center for Family Representation. It explains why New York City needs to build on the success on its model of family representation by making lawyers available to families as soon as they are under investigation by the city’s Administration for Children’s Services.

● NBC News and the Houston Chronicle have another strong follow-up to their series on the devastation done to families when “child abuse pediatricians” get it wrong. One doctor has a solution that’s simple, sensible and would only be resisted in a field as arrogant as child welfare. They resist even though, as this doctor notes, “When we get this one wrong, you take a kid away from a loving family, and a caretaker goes to jail.”


● The American Bar Association publication Child Law Practice Today has a guide to help practitioners deal with Race and Poverty Bias in the Child Welfare System.