NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending Nov 4, 2025

● Research overwhelmingly shows that, almost always, the least harmful form of foster care, by far, is kinship foster care – placement with extended family. Consider that as you read this story from USA Today about how the State of Texas threw every possible barrier in the way of a heroic grandmother who stepped up to take care of her grandchildren. 

● In Kansas, which tears apart families at one of the highest rates in the nation, the leader of a private foster care agency describes conditions in her own agency as “pandemonium.” She tells a legislative committee about a six-year-old sleeping in their office for 48 nights before being institutionalized. Then she says the agency needs a taxpayer bailout because insurance premiums are going up. To the surprise of no one who regularly reads this blog, I have a blog post about this. 

● File this next one under “those who cannot remember the past…” I always worry when I ask reporters if they’ve ever heard of cases like the McMartin Preschool, and they say no. That’s understandable; that case happened more than 40 years ago. But it seems that a lot of people, from caseworkers to therapists to journalists, forgot. How else to explain the horrific injustice exposed in a very recent case in Washington, D.C. by former Washington Post reporter Radley Balko on his Substack, The Watch. It could have been called McMartin Redux. And in this recent case, some of the biggest failures were those of the D.C. family police agency. 

Given that none of the individuals or organizations most responsible for whipping up the hysteria over cases like McMartin all those years ago ever has been held accountable – indeed, some are still treated as reliable sources by journalists today, perhaps it was inevitable. 

As for the media, the then-media critic for the Los Angeles Times, David Shaw, won a Pulitzer Prize for a series critiquing their failure in the McMartin case. Balko hasn’t gotten one of those for this story (and media were not the primary focus) – but he did get a “laurel” from Columbia Journalism Review. 

● Libertarian journalist John Stossel offersa refreshing take on these issues. Refreshing on two counts: First, he hears out all sides, then he offers a candid conclusion: 

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

From The News-Review in Oregon:

A boy who said he was sexually abused by another child while both lived in a Douglas County foster home is suing the state, claiming the parents of the home knew about the alleged abuse yet allowed it to occur. … 

J.A., who was born in 2014, lived in the foster home between 2019 and the first half of 2020. During that time, J.A. was sexually assaulted by a female foster child who also lived in the home. The girl reportedly made the boy touch her private area, insert objects into her, and drink her urine, the lawsuit said. 

The foster parents in the home reportedly learned of the abuse, but “simply moved Jane to another bedroom,” according to the lawsuit. Further, the foster parents reportedly continued to allow the girl back into the boy’s bed at night. …