NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending October 21, 2025

● Serial, the famous podcast shop that’s now part of The New York Times, is the latest to examine the enormous harm to children done by some child abuse pediatricians. But if you think you already know the story, at least check out Part 3 – because it looks at a bigger issue: The terrible harm done to children when agencies think tearing apart a family is ok because it’s “erring on the side of the child” or “better safe than sorry.” 

● Yes, but those who cling to “better safe than sorry” claim that at least if we throw them in foster care they won’t die. The next time you hear it, you might want to show the speaker a study from Sweden that shows where children really are more likely to die – more than four times more likely, in fact. I have a blog post with the answer, along with a link to the study. 

● KNXV-TV reports that in Arizona, a state that still tears apart families at a rate well above the national average, “Since 2016, state records show DCS has paid out more than $30 million to settle lawsuits involving children.” The most common allegation: wrongful removal. 

● In Maine, private contractors are hired by the state family police agency to arrange visits after children are taken from their parents. The first visit is supposed to be arranged within seven days. That’s actually far too long, especially for the youngest children. But the Maine Monitor reports that one of the contractors met the deadline less than half the time.  That almost certainly would have been the story’s lead – except that another contractor, the largest, met the deadline only ten percent of the time.  The state renewed that vendor's contract anyway. 

As one guardian ad litem put it: 

“Babies being removed and then not being allowed to see the parent that they’ve just begun bonding with, that’s horrific. But a child of any age needs to see their parent again.” 

And then there was the case in which a judge said the failure to arrange visits between a mother and her child was “simply not acceptable.” But she terminated the child’s right to ever live with the mother ever again anyway. 

Because this is Maine. And in Maine, which takes away children at one of the highest rates in the nation, whether you’re a contractor or the family police agency, you can do pretty much whatever you damn well please to any family you want to do it to, and there’s no penalty. 

● WANF-TV in Atlanta reports “A Cherokee County mother has been cleared by child welfare officials after false positive drug test results nearly separated her from her children.” 

● In Oklahoma, KWTV reports, a lawmaker who wants to raise the standard of evidence before children can be torn from their families got support from some surprising places – in fact, even from a CASA.  From the story:

 At last week’s interim study, attorney Phillip Owens, who is a foster parent himself, said many parents face unfair court battles. "Most of the deprived cases that I handle don’t involve any kind of a criminal charge," Owens said. “Way too many judges in this state take DHS at their word." 

Tulsa-based private investigator Eric Cullen echoed that statement. "There’s just no compromise. It’s black and white," Cullen said. "It’s really harsh; it’s a little draconian, frankly.” 

Jennifer Ballew is a court-appointed special advocate who is assigned to child welfare cases by judges. She said policy changes are necessary. "The policies of DHS do not lead in the direction of reunification," Ballew said. 

Two columns in The Imprint shed new light on chronic family police system failures: 

● From Shellie Taggart and Wendy Mota of Futures Without Violence: A reminder of how the system makes things infinitely worse for survivors of domestic violence and their children. They write: 

CPS continues to rely on a vast surveillance network of mandated reporters to bring survivors of domestic violence into the system, where their protective strategies are often misinterpreted as neglect. Their lives are constrained by unnecessary services, and too often their children are removed for ‘failure to protect.’ This practice continues despite the obvious harms caused by the system and extensive evidence that a loving parent-child bond is a critical protective factor for healing from trauma. 

●Ericka Hickey writes about how she was separated from her siblings in foster care – but she notes an extra level of cruelty. She writes: 

The most painful part of my story isn’t that I was separated from my sisters. It’s that I was only brought around when it served someone else’s goals, when it made their job easier, or fulfilled a requirement — not because our bond mattered and should have been honored and protected. 

● NCCPR’s commentary, behind a paywall in the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch, begins this way: 

Faced with horrifying child abuse deaths, often in cases that were well known to child protective services agencies, there are two ways to respond: Determine what went wrong case-by-case and do the hard work necessary to fix the problems so they never happen again. Or just scapegoat efforts to keep families together and embrace what amounts to a take-the-child-and-run approach to child welfare. …

 The first approach leads to safer children; the second makes for great politics. Unfortunately, Virginia’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, Janet Kelly, chose the second.