NCCPR news and commentary roundup, week ending February 2, 2025

● When the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act, that challenge came from Texas. Now, The Imprint reports, the most comprehensive legislation anywhere in the country to expand the protections of ICWA to all children has been introduced – in Texas. If anything this law would go further than ICWA, in that it’s more specific about the obligations the courts and the state family police agency would have to meet. 

● ICT News and the Montana Free Press report that Montana lawmakers are proposing to reauthorize and expand that state’s version of ICWA. That law applies only to Native American children, but in Montana, that’s a lot of children. Native Americans make up 9% of the state child population – but 35% of children in foster care. 

● Writing in The Imprint Nora McCarthy and Jeremy Kohomban remind us that even when a family police investigation doesn’t lead to foster care, it still can do enormous harm to children.  They write: 

Investigations can leave enduring negative impacts on the family. Research finds that, after an investigation, parents limit social networks and help-seeking to reduce the risk of another investigation. This social isolation places children at even greater risk, and children can suffer when parents fear discussing family needs with educators, doctors and other helping professionals who are required by law to report child safety concerns. 

Clearly, to keep children safer, we must reserve an investigatory approach for children facing real danger. For children at low risk, we must develop methods to address family distress that inflict less harm. 

● In this Newsweek story NCCPR points out the harm of such investigations, and notes that "every parental misjudgment—if that is what happened here—is not child abuse." 

● For another example of how the family police system can be the ultimate middle-class entitlement -- step right up and take someone else’s child for your very own! -- check out this story from WZTV in Nashville. 

● The Imprint has an update on criminal charges against a foster youth advocate – charges that never should have been brought and which the relevant prosecuting agency and/or judge should have had the decency to dismiss out of hand. 

● On the NCCPR Child Welfare Blog: a short trip into the weeds concerning how a state spins “child welfare” data, with lessons for those looking at such data everywhere. 

● Some good news: The University of North Carolina soon will join the growing list of law schools that have family defense clinics. 

In this week’s edition of The Horror Stories Go in All Directions: 

● From the Topeka Capital-Journal: 

Police in a Wichita-area town have arrested the adoptive parents of a girl whose body was found buried in a backyard five months ago, while officials with the state child welfare agency haven't yet released a summary of its involvement. 

The Rose Hill Police Department on Monday arrested the adoptive parents of the girl, whose birth name was Natalie Garcia and adoptive name was Kennedy Schroer. Her adoptive parents are 50-year-old Crystina Elizabeth Schroer and 53-year-old Joseph Shane Schroer.