NCCPR news and commentary roundup, week ending August 19, 2025

● Gothamist reports on that big victory for domestic violence survivors and their children in New York. The city’s family police agency, the Administration for Children’s Services, must stop harassing them simply because they survived violence from their partners. From the story: 

“Essentially, the ACS policy at issue in this case permits it to surveil the mother simply because the child’s father committed acts of domestic violence against her,” Associate Justice Ellen Gesmer wrote in the court’s ruling. “We cannot condone a policy based on this faulty and unlawful premise.” 

And hear reporter Samantha Max discuss the story on WNYC Public Radio. In particular, check out the excerpt from oral argument at 4:13 in; listen closely for the brief moment of derisive laughter directed toward the ACS attorney’s argument by one of the judges. 

● There was another significant victory for families, this time in Michigan – thanks to some University of Michigan Law School students. 

● The Imprint reports on a bill passed unanimously by the New York State Legislature that, if it becomes law, would take the first step toward seriously regulating the insidious practice of “hidden foster care.” What is that first step? Finding out how much of it there is. 

From the story: 

[U]nder a recently passed bill in New York, these arrangements would be brought into the light, marking a first step toward fully understanding the extent of the practice and perhaps curtailing it. Critics say hidden foster care circumvents legal protections, relieves governments of their responsibility, and robs caregivers of vital support and resources that are available under the formal child welfare process. 

Bringing hidden foster care into the open would have one other advantage: It would be harder for family police agencies to pretend they take fewer children than they really do. 

● You’ve heard the child welfare establishment types yell Drugs! Drugs! Drugs! as the all-purpose supposed reason for taking away so many children. But if they meant that, they’d distinguish between when drug abuse genuinely endangers children and when it does not. 

And when it does, they would demand drug treatment – in particular, the kind that works best, where parents can stay with their children. But since Drugs! Drugs! Drugs! is mostly just an excuse to tear apart poor families so their children can be placed into “better” – i.e., whiter and/or wealthier – homes, the same establishment makes treatment as difficult as possible. Shoshana Walter, author of the new book Rehab: An American Scandal, discusses the problem for The Marshall Project. 

● In 2016, two legal scholars argued that, when it comes to the most sacred cow in child welfare, Court-Appointed Special Advocates, no matter how well-meaning the volunteers, the program is so steeped in unfixable racial and class bias that runs so deep, the program is, they said, “an act of white supremacy.”  And that was before, as The Imprint reports, this happened.

● WZTV reports on what a Tennessee family had to endure at the hands of the family police, even after a judge found them innocent.

● When one of Connecticut’s so-called STTAR home dumping ground shelters was engulfed in a scandal over rampant abuse, the Connecticut family police agency had the perfect answer! Spend more and change the acronym! (What, you were expecting real solutions?)  I have a blog post about it.