NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending July 2, 2025

● A volunteer in the Los Angeles Court-Appointed Special Advocates program said she was “triggered” when the program director used the words “social justice” or “racial justice.”  This particular CASA director used those terms more than most. Instead of deciding the problem was with the volunteer, they … well, it’s CASA, so I’m sure you can guess. The Imprint has a story and I have a blog post about it.  

● When you take away children at a rate 60% above the national average, you have to start begging for beds, and beggars can’t be choosers. So over and over and over, you turn a blind eye to what’s really happening in the places where you put all those children. The Boston Globe exposes some of the terrible consequences.

● Missouri only tears apart families at a rate 50% above the national average – but the new head of their family police agency is aiming higher.  I have a blog post about how Sara Smith of the Missouri Children’s Division is turning up the spigot on the foster-care-to-prison pipeline.

● Of course, no matter how many times journalists expose abuse in group homes and institutions, someone will always bring up Boys Town.  After all, Boys Town is wonderful, isn’t it? So it must be OK to institutionalize children, right?  So I’m glad I stumbled across this stunning 2023 series from the Des Moines Register that I’d missed at the time.

● Yet again, scandal surrounds the work of a “child abuse pediatrician.” This time, ProPublica reports, even another doctor who dared challenge her allegedly faced retaliation. There’s a harrowing recording of a crucial meeting. And in this case, a 2014 foster-care panic, fueled by the Minnesota Star-Tribune, may have played an indirect role.

● Fortunately, more recent reporting by the Star-Tribune that seemed aimed at starting another panic failed, and the state is taking small steps in the right direction, such as the initiative discussed in this story from The Imprint.

● “I remember the case of a 6-year-old boy whose teacher called child protective services because he had missed school one too many times,” writes Mathangi Swaminathan in The 74.

No one asked why. If they had, they would’ve heard about the eviction notice taped to the front door, the backpack still stuffed from the rushed move, the air mattress where he now slept curled beside his baby sister. His parents were working two jobs each, leaving at dawn and returning long after bedtime, doing everything they could to keep food on the table and a roof overhead. 

He wasn’t unsafe. He wasn’t unloved. He was just missing too many days of school: seven, to be exact, the unexcused limit. And that was enough to trigger an investigation. 

● There are several states in which, if you are torn from the arms of your parents as a child, you are almost certainly never going home. I have a blog post about the state with the worst record – Virginia – and a follow-up about some of the others. 

● In the Michigan Advance, I have a column about that state, which, also has a particularly dismal record. 

● In Washington State, whether it’s a state agency that won’t help or a tribal agency that can’t, Native American children wind up forced into foster care at disproportionate rates. KUOW Public Radio reports on the consequences.